English Drama Before Shakespeare

Peter Happe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317871125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

English Drama before Shakespeare surveys the range of dramatic activity in English up to 1590. The book challenges the traditional divisions between Medieval and Renaissance literature by showing that there was much continuity throughout this period, in spite of many innovations. The range of dramatic activity includes well-known features such as mystery cycles and the interludes, as well as comedy and tragedy. Para-dramatic activity such as the liturgical drama, royal entries and localised or parish drama is also covered. Many of the plays considered are anonymous, but a coherent, biographical view can be taken of the work of known dramatists such as John Heywood, John Bale, and Christopher Marlowe.Peter Happé's study is based upon close reading of selected plays, especially from the mystery cycles and such Elizabethan works as Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. It takes account of contemporary research into dramatic form, performance (including some important recent revivals), dramatic sites and early theatre buildings, and the nature of early dramatic texts. Recent changes in outlook generated by the publication of the written records of early drama form part of the book's focus. There is an extensive bibliography covering social and political background, the lives and works of individual authors, and the development of theatrical ideas through the period. The book is aimed at undergraduates, as well as offering an overview for more advanced students and researchers in drama and in related fields of literature and cultural studies.

Part I

The Medieval Drama

Chapter 3

Worship, Instruction and Entertainment: Liturgical Drama

Since the bulk of English drama before 1500 is religious, and since a very considerable portion of that surviving from the sixteenth century is either specifically didactic or substantially influenced by religious matters, we shall attempt in this chapter to give an account of the religious contexts in which the plays were written and performed. This will include a consideration of the liturgical drama, which is closely linked.

In describing or contemplating medieval drama we ought not to impose distorting modern norms upon a varied corpus of plays, neither in terms of time, nor in terms of types of play, nor in terms of what the twentieth century has come to see as drama. For us the drama takes place on a stage, or on television, or on film or on radio. We may experience drama in a theatre with a proscenium arch, or in an arena, or in a village hall. Today a large part of the appreciation and understanding of drama also takes place by studying the texts of drama in printed books. All of these modes may help us to come closer to the medieval drama, but they all contain obstacles as well.

Life in medieval times was much more orientated towards religion, both in outward forms like people’s occupations and also with regard to the inner life. There was a very strong sense of human impermanence, and religion was seen as a way of meeting many difficulties and misfortunes. Instability in society, and the proximity of life-threatening experiences such as the plague or childbirth are constant themes of preaching as well as of the various forms of consolation and instruction which the Church developed. On the other hand, worship also comprised joy and celebration and gave cause for hope. The work of the Church was concerned with both fear and the hope which transcended it. Thus to regard the religious content of the early plays as being about moral instruction alone is to narrow its scope too far.

The sources of the religious drama may give us some indications about what their authors were aiming at, and one can but express surprise at the wide range of material from which they drew. There was, however, a central store, a sort of cultural bank common to medieval Christendom, which consisted of the Bible, in the form of St Jerome’s Vulgate in Latin, many legends about saints and their miracles, and many doctrinal configurations such as the World, the Flesh and the Devil, or the Seven Deadly Sins, which arose largely through patristic elaboration of doctrine derived from teaching in the Bible. The most important writers who helped to build up the body of doctrine were the four doctors of the ancient world: St Augustine of Hippo, St Ambrose, St Jerome in the fifth century, and St Gregory in the sixth. To these must be added St Thomas Aquinas (Dominican) in the thirteenth century. But their work may be supplemented by a network of other writings variously interrelated. Among these Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica (1155–58) and Cursor Mundi, the anonymous fourteenth-century poem, gave versions of the Christian narrative, and these were supported by books of guidance such as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book, and John Mirk’s Festial, a collection of sermons. Works such as these were available in monastic libraries and were used in the training of priests. It is often quite difficult, however, to pin down an exact source for doctrines embodied in the plays because these writings overlapped in so many ways. The key is that they built up a body of doctrine which was in common for the educated clergy, and which could be made available to the laity. Indeed it is essential to come to terms with the many ways in which the wisdom of the Church accumulated so that the various kinds of clergy, priests, monks and friars – the religious teachers, in essence – could learn and accumulate. Much of this was spearheaded by the preaching of the Franciscans and Dominicans. The latter also played an important intellectual role in the development of theology, as did the Augustinians. At the heart this was a literate process which depended upon a huge industry of scribes whose efforts built up great libraries of texts. But most people were still illiterate and had to experience the consolations of the Church through visual and aural means.

This material was used to instruct the audiences in such matters as moral behaviour, or the sanctity of baptism; to give them such information as to help them how to live their lives in spiritual terms. But there was also a need to make familiar, and to reiterate, and to re-inforce the narrative aspects of belief, which were not stressed merely for moral reasons or moral patterns but because the stories or legends could be used in a variety of ways. These narratives often acquired the power of myths. Part of the effectiveness of the presentation of stories through the biblical plays was that they could be related to other narratives of which the spectators were aware. Thus to dwell upon Christ as a second Adam builds upon a pre-existing knowledge of who Adam was in the first place. We should not assume that audiences were ignorant, or that the level of instruction, even for those who could not read, was necessarily elementary. And again as part of religious experience, which it is often difficult to separate from doctrine, there was also the experience of religious emotions which we should regard as worship. This could include a portrayal of the human position in the world created by God; it could make conscious the grimmer aspects of experience such as illness and death and the relationship of these to the life to come; and it could and did extensively celebrate the greatness of God as manifested in legend and in divine intervention into human history. The drama which we shall be discussing here shares with the liturgy of the Church itself this last aspect of religious experience, and indeed it has been an object of controversy as to how far the liturgy itself is dramatic. We can draw from such controversy the important idea that, just as a congregation in a service through the liturgy is made to share what is being celebrated, so in medieval drama there is often a clear role for the audience as participants in an act of worship. It is a nice point to decide where congregations become audiences.

Another important aspect was meditation. Collections like the Books of Hours were meant to give a visual version of biblical incidents such as the Nativity, and each page was accompanied by relevant texts and quotations. Such books were not exactly to be read, but to be used to stimulate an appropriate state of mind based upon ideas and feelings arising from the combination of picture and words, and perhaps to lead to prayer. The so-called Biblia Pauperum is another such example.¹ It is thought to have been composed in the thirteenth century, the earliest extant manuscript fragments being dated c. 1300, and there are eighty-three surviving examples of the texts originating in several European countries. It was printed in 1460 as a ‘block book’ or book of woodcuts and reprinted many times thereafter. Each page consists of three central pictures linked thematically. Thus a picture of Christ’s Entombment is flanked by Joseph being cast into the well, and Jonas being swallowed by the whale (page g), while the Resurrection is accompanied by Samson removing the gates of Gaza, and Jonas emerging from the whale (page i). The pages are set out in a similar fashion and the accompanying texts are grouped symmetrically at corresponding points on the page. Some of them give fragments of narrative, while others are phrases which embody intentions or observations such as ‘On the third Day he shall rise up: we shall know and follow him’ (Hosea 3:6) on the Resurrection page. It is thought that this material is too sophisticated to be intended for the illiterate or the ignorant, but the processes of cross-reference, illustration and recollection it implies are clearly related to those which might arise from witnessing the performance of a mystery cycle.

Similarly, The Holkham Bible Picture Book gives valuable insight into this visual culture. It dates from c. 1325 and it was influenced by the Historia Scholastica and the Cursor Mundi. It is more specifically cyclic than the Biblia Pauperum, and graphically illustrates many of the episodes familiar from the plays, such as Adam and Eve eating the apple while the serpent watches, and the Torturers stretching the limbs of Christ to fit the holes in the cross, as the York play enacts. Many of the gestures and actions seem highly mobile. There is a sense of dramatic unity about the whole work, particularly as the narrative is arranged in three parts: Genesis to Noah, a Gospel harmony or amalgamation, and the Last Things together with Judgement. It is a lavish production and it is thought that it was intended for a wealthy urban readership, but it is early enough for the text to be still in Anglo-Norman, and it was composed by a Dominican.² The book raises the important matter of the interaction between the visual arts and the drama. There must have been a degree of cross-influence: it may not always be possible to show which influenced which, but the one does allow us to appreciate the other.

The critical problem which therefore arises is how to separate or identify the aspects of worship and instruction from elements which might be considered entertainment. The last is more clearly identifiable in the twentieth century as the role of drama, but even here it is not exclusively so. We still go to drama to be entertained, but at the same time to contemplate or share perceived truths or patterns of behaviour which we identify as images of life and conduct in a sense which is quasi-religious. And it is clear too that some drama has the function of celebration of qualities and virtues which are held in esteem. We should not overlook that a good deal of the medieval drama also contains condemnation of evil behaviour and a graphic presentation of its consequences; and again such a sense of outrage, sometimes debased to mere sensationalism, is also part of the modern experience of drama. Perhaps the chief difference for the medieval drama was that there was less scope for a variety of interpretations of existence, and that orthodoxy was an ever-present feature.

Nevertheless each of the characteristic aspects of the religious drama – its didacticism, its worship and its narrative – were expressed in a wide range of dramatic techniques. Although there was some resistance to drama in clerical circles, it was perceived by many that drama could be very successful as a means of promoting these elements. Hence its techniques were developed to a high level of sophistication. We therefore find that in the plays there is much effort expended upon plot, characterisation, satire and emotion, and that techniques were evolved for the extensive use of these whatever the religious objectives. Beyond this there is also the question of how such things as language and gesture, space and time are enlisted to make effective the encounter between text and audience which we designate as performance.

It is convenient to consider plot in two broad categories: those which take on a narrative based upon the Bible or upon a legend which can be taken to be broadly ‘true’, and those which have a plot which is especially constructed or adapted to bring out a special point of doctrine, usually a moral or political theme. This broad distinction enables us to consider mystery plays and saints plays on the one hand and the allegorical drama of the morality plays on the other. It is true, though, that in these two broad types there is also a need to include characters of particular type to fit in with the kinds of plot here envisaged.

The English mystery cycles present the Christian story from the Cre...