English drama from Medieval Times to Shakespeare's contemporaries

The origin of Medieval drama: the Quem-quaeritis-trope

• almost total independence from the Greek and Roman theatrical tradition

• based on Latin liturgical drama

• authors were mostly clerks

• Roman Catholic Church: Easter Mass

  • there was a part that was acted out

• liturgical drama slowly moved out of the church-building into the church-yard → to the market-place and the streets and other convenient and busy areas of the town

• drama gradually became ‘secular’ and ‘profane’ (cf. pro+fano: ‘before the temple’)

Miracle plays, Mystery plays, Morality plays (3Ms)

Mytery plays

• Biblical, the life of Jesus

• main point: re-enact events, actions

• acted out by various crafts → trade guilds, each responsible for a particular part in the play

• short plays enacted for the delight of the simple people

• wagon/ pageant = stage with a curtained scaffold → the lower part of the wagon was the dressing room

  • each wagon presented a different scene of the cycle, and the

    wagons were following each other, repeating the scenes at successive stations

• mystery cycles: Chester cycle, Wakefield cycle

Miracle plays

• saints life and miracles

Morality plays

• based on allegories, dramatizing abstract concepts (Seven Deadly Sins)

• hero: mankind

• challenges & fights

  • price: mankind’s soul → Heaven or Hell

  • mankind has to decide and take sides

• memento mori: reckon with death → the base of morality plays

• people have to repent while they can

• psychomachia: the battle on the human soul

• Everyman

  • mankind is visited by Death

  • good dead accompany Everyman to Death

  • irony and diemma of the Vice

  • humanizing evil

  • paradox: the most attractive characters becomes the evil character

Comedy in the Middle Ages

• comedy in moralities: from poverty to prosperity, from sin to redemption → the comic is associated with joy rather than with laughter

• source of the comic: belittling of evil

• Wakefield Master (anonymus clerk): The Secons Shepherd’s Play

The Second Shepherd’s Play

• parallel story to the birth of Jesus

• setting: the moor

• Mak (antagonist) turns the action on → devil & angel? (messenger)

• casting a spell → Devil, witches (the person who steals the sheep)

• having a dream about one’s wife ~ Joseph

• presents what’s going on in the background at the time when Jesus was born

• opens with 3 soliloquies (a monologue addressed to oneself) from 3 different shepherds

  • Coll - beaten down by the icy, wet, col weather + wealthy landowners

    • raising sheep became profitable → demanded that all their workers become shepherds

  • Gyb: complains about the bitter cold & harsh conditions + feels oppressed by marriage → openly wishes his wife were dead

  • Daw: works for Coll & Gyb - unforgiving weather + feels oppressed by his hunger

• the shepherds sing a nativity song → cheer themselves up

• Mak is approaching (has a reputation as a thief, especially for stealing cheep)

  • covers himself with a cloak and puts on a thick fake accent → the shepherds are not fooled

• Mak tries to gain their sympathy → says he has no money or food for his family

• the shepherds go to sleep → Mak is forced to sleep between them = they will sense if he wakes up

• Mak wakes up and casts a spell → steals a sheep & brings it home to his wife, Gill, who reminds him that his act is punishable by death

  • goes back to the shepherds and lies between them

• Daw wakes up and says he had a dream in which a sheep was stolen

• shepherds go to Mak’s house to confront him

  • the sheep is wrapped up as a newborn + Gill fakes pain of post-labor ~ Holy Mary

• Daw wants to peek at the baby → realizes it’s the missing sheep → Mak: “the baby was stolen by the fairies and it was deformed”

• Coll decides that humiliating Mak is enough of a punishment for him

• after the shepherds return to the fields, they lie down exhausted → an angel appears to inform them & exclaims that Christ was born

• the 3 shepherds head to Bethlehem

  • 3 gifts for the baby: Coll- cherries, Gyb - a bird, Daw - a ball

Tragedy in the Middle Ages

• almost nobody writes tragedies as we understand it

• Medieval authors till the 13th century never talk about catharsis and they usually mention the following features of tragedy

  • it is about sad (mournful, sorrowful) deeds, often crimes

  • t is concerned with public and often historical (‘real’) figures (kings), as opposed to comedy, which deals with private affairs of imaginary ‘low’ people

  • it was sung in the theatre by one man while the actors were moving as in a ballet or imitating speech (the singer ‘dubbing’ their parts)

  • it was written in high style (as opposed to comedy, written in low style)

Elizabethan Age

• unprecedented literary growth in the field of all kinds of writing (religious, philosophical, poetic, including lyrical and epic poetry and romance, historical, satirical, etc.)

• printing appeared

• revolution in the field of drama

• opening of permanent theatres: The Theater, The Rose, The Curtain, The Swan

  • financial enterprises for the creators → patronage of artistocrats/ members of the Royal Family (Lord Chamberlain’s Men, King’s Men)

  • 2000-3000 people could fit into these buildings

Renaissance Theatrical Conventions

• unroofed, oval or octagonal building

• apron stage - 3 dimensional

  • surrounded by the standing spectators (groundlings)

  • visibility around and from above the stage

• tring house in the back of the stage with a right and left entrance on

  its respective sides, used for coming and going by the actors

• flat top of the stage: the place of the musicians, or serving as the

  ‘balcony’

• roofed stage extended well beyond the tiring house, to protect the

  musicians and the rich and expensive costumes of the actors

• hardly any stage-props → the detailed explanations at the beginning

  of scenes were necessary

• roof above the stage: also called ‘Heaven’: storing some stage

  machinery, such as pulleys and ropes to lower ‘gods’ or ‘goddesses’

  from above

• in the middle of the stage: a trap-door called ‘Hell’, serving e.g. as a

  path for Old Hamlet’s Ghost to come up from the ‘underworld’ or as Ophelia’ grave

• spectators

  • all layers of contemporary society were represented in these theatres

  • eating, drinking, talking, laughing around the stage

• plays were performed in broad daylight

Age of Theaters

• 1576-1642 (Commonwealth)

• circa 2000 plays were written

• roots from Latin and Greek theater + specific English

• appeared around/ from Cambridge

  • University Wits: Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd

• central & northern parts of London were more posh than the souht

• playhouses were on the south bank of the Themes

The Renissance Worldview

• human being as an identity - Humanism

• capturing the person and their identity

• looking as they are → no idealization

  • realistic depiction of humans

• protestantism is emerging

  • questioning Roman Chatolicism

  • having a personal relationship with God

  • predestination: your only chance is God’s mercy (everyone is a sinner) → we are all predestined to fall

• Individualism

• The Renaissance Man (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo)

• education in the center → englightening the brain makes you bigger

• Earth-centered view (Copernicus, Galielo)

• Marlowe’s Faustus should be interpreted from this perspective)

Doctor Faustus (1604)

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

• well-educated

• possibly part of the English Secret Service

• first playwright to employ blank verse on stage

• his plays were much more popular than Shakespeare’s at the time

• died in a pub fight

Doctor Faustus

• genre: tragedy

  • relying on Ancient Greek and Roman tragedy

    • chorus - comments on events

    • complication/ climax

    • harmatia - fatal flaw, error

    • hubris - pride

    • anagnorisis - the character makes a critical discovery (towards the end)

    • perpeteia

    • rising & falling action

• inspiration: Faust-legend

  • Johann Fausten/ Dr. John Faustus → self-proclaimed magician and wizzard

• themes: ambition, knowledge, damnation, the limits of human power

• first performed in 1588

• was printed in quarto editions

• has 2 versions: A text and a B text

  • A Text

    • 600 lines shorter than B text

    • inner fight → more psychological

  • B Text

    • more theatrical

    • highlighted comic scenes

    • more characters

• blend of tragedy and dark comedy

  • High Tragedy: Faustus’s intellectual grandeur and downfall

  • Low Comedy: scenes with Wagner, Robin, and the clownish antics of Faustus’s servants undercut the gravity, possibly as audience relief/ comic relief or satire

Characters

• Doctor Faustus

  • mastered the subjets of logic and medicine

  • restless intellect → acquisition of dark-knowledge

  • disregards God’s authority

  • his visions will never materialize

  • lacks moral strenght

  • refuses every chance to repent and save his soul

• Mephistophilis

  • agent of Lucifer → facilitates Faustus’s damnation

  • surprising portrait of the damned: villainous & tormented

  • deceives and manipulates Faustus when he leans towards repentence

  • he also reveals his own agony

  • before signing the pact, he advises Faustus to leave his original plan

• The Good Angel & Evil Angel

  • represent Faustus’s inner conflict → conscience vs. temptation

Plot & Analysis

• Faustus wants powers that only Jesus/ God have

  • Jesus feels for these people, but Faustus just wants to show off his divine power

  • rejects traditional fields of study (theology, medicine, law), in favor of necromancy → seeking God-like power and knowledge

• rejecting theology based on the Bible

  • faulty syllogism: points of evidence but there’s no logical connection because you leave out some important parts

  • selectively reading the Bible

    • the gift of God is eternal life & he forgives → Faustus does not see this

• The play debates Calvinist predestination—is Faustus doomed from the start, or does he choose his fate?

• good vs. evil

  • can be interpreted as Everyman

  • typical psychomachia can be seen, which is a morality play element

  • embodies both the Renaissance & the Medieval worldview

    • fear of diabolical pacts and divine judgement

    • thrist of knowledge, individualism, secular power → questions its moral cost

• duality - equivocation

• the contract

  • his body is revolting

  • The Good Angel, scholars, The Old Man → try to get Faustus to repent

  • Mephistiphilis: “everything is Hell where Heaven is not“

  • sells his soul for eternity in Hell

• last monologue

  • recognition of the difference between eternity and finiteness

  • no time = no hope = no redemption

  • consumatum est - Biblical quote

    • one of the last words Christ says on the cross → Faustus quotes this when he signs the contract

  • Faustus’s introspection leads only to paralysis, not action