Notes on Mystery Plays, the Globe, and Hamlet

Mystery Plays: Definition and Context

Mystery plays are not about solving a modern mystery; they stage the mysteries of God and biblical stories, and they are intimately tied to the medieval guild system (trade guilds). The term “mystery” here refers to sacred mysteries, not whodunits.
They are described as a pivot point in the development of European (and global) theater, signaling a shift in how theater is produced, organized, and consumed.
Historical timeline: late medieval era, with origins that stretch back to around the $ext{ca. }12^{ ext{th}}$ century, and lasting for several centuries preceding Shakespeare’s lifetime. They survive in forms that make them central to the pre-Shakespearean theatrical culture.
The mystery plays reflect a major schism and cultural shift in Europe: from cloistered religious performance to public, lay participation and civic celebration.
The mystery plays are not just stage works; they are civic rituals tied to annual celebrations in towns and cities, created and presented by skilled tradespeople organized in guilds.
The plays dramatize biblical narratives ranging from Adam and Eve to the Resurrection, with each guild responsible for a particular biblical story and producing its own cart-like stage as part of a procession through town.
They also mark a transition from liturgical drama (performed in cloisters and monasteries for the religious community) to performances accessible to the laity in vernacular languages, thereby intertwining religion with public culture and social life.
The medieval worldview inherent in mystery plays centers on the mysteries of faith and the Bible, as well as the “mysteries” of guild organization and urban labor.
The late medieval period sees the laity increasingly participating in theater, with guilds driving production, performance spaces expanding beyond religious settings, and public spaces becoming stages for religious narrative.

The Guilds and Economic Context

The organizing unit for medieval theater becomes the trade guilds (blacksmiths, tanners, weavers, carpenters, shipwrights, etc.).
Guilds function as civic and economic institutions that mobilize resources, space, and labor for communal religious and cultural performances.
The transformation of the urban economy from feudal obligations toward early capitalism supports the growth of public theater: guilds produce and sponsor plays, and towns fund and stage these events as a form of communal identity and moral instruction.
The guild-based structure helps explain why mystery plays are so publicly celebratory and participatory, as opposed to private religious drama.

How Mystery Plays Work: Structure and Civic Performances

Time and place: once a year, a town designates a “mystery play day” (a festive day when work is paused and the community gathers).
Each guild selects a biblical story (e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, the Resurrection) and creates a cart with a stage, effectively a parade float.
The carts travel to multiple fixed points around town (often 7–10 points). At each point, the guild enacts its assigned story; the day unfolds as a sequence of mini-dramas, collectively retelling the biblical narrative of both Testaments.
The experience is communal, and the day offers both spiritual reenactment and entertainment. Audiences could follow a favorite story (e.g., Adam and Eve) around multiple stops.
The performance environment emphasized street theater, public space, and communal participation. It was festive, often riotously humorous, and highly theatrical, even though the material remained religious.
The plays functioned as an act of worship and communal faith, a form of religious practice maintained by lay citizens and guild members rather than ordained clergy.

York Mystery Plays: A Case Study and Modern Re-creations

York (Old York) in northern England was a major center of mystery play performances.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, York has hosted annual recreations of these mystery plays, preserving texts written in the medieval period and staging them anew.
A typical York reenactment depicts Adam and Eve in front of York Minister, with townspeople in colorful costumes and musical accompaniment. These modern recreations illustrate the community-driven, amateur nature of the original performances.
The plays are not professional theater; they are amateur theatricals supported by civic infrastructure, making them akin to sacral-sacramental theater in spirit.
The performance style often includes jokes, physical comedy, and a lively sense of festivity, even as the subject matter remains religious and doctrinal.
The Harrowing of Hell (a popular medieval mystery-play segment) is used as an example of the kind of content performed, showing a blend of medieval epic elements with occasional modern stage devices (electric guitar, contemporary costuming, etc.) in modern recreations while preserving the core sacramental intent.

Space, Stage, and the Transformation toward Secular Theater

The early mystery plays occur within church spaces, cloisters, and open steps into cathedrals, which creates a natural proscenium-like space: a raised area for performance with audience around and behind.
With laity entering performances, vernacular language emerges as an essential feature, making biblical narratives accessible to illiterate common people.
The decline of Latin mass as the vernacular becomes the lingua franca of performance helps democratize religious storytelling and fosters lay participation in theater.
As mystery plays evolve, the stage moves from cloister to public, open-air performance and then to tavern courtyards, leading to the emergence of professional and semi-professional secular theater.
The tavern courtyard setting demonstrates how a makeshift stage can become a proper professional space: a raised stage, entrances and exits, a backstage area, and a circular or around-the-stage audience arrangement.
The Globe Theatre (London) emerges as the quintessential early modern theater, representing the transition from medieval mystery plays to secular, commercial drama. The Globe features a raised stage, a large central “discovery space,” an open yard around the stage, three tiers of galleries, and an accessible entrance/exit configuration that supports theater-in-the-round dynamics.
A distinctive feature is the balcony, which parallels the earlier courtyard space and allows for a stacked, multi-level audience arrangement.
The Globe is often described as a modern reconstruction of Shakespeare’s theater landscape, and additional details (e.g., the discovery space and stage geometry) will be elaborated in future lectures.

The Geography of Early Modern London Theaters

By 1600, Shakespeare’s theaters were mostly situated outside the City of London due to Puritan influence and city governance; the city’s Puritan authorities restricted theatrical activity within city walls.
Theaters included the Globe, the Curtain, the Fortune, among others, located in suburbs or outlying districts (the City of London’s original walls were smaller than modern London).
The location outside the city walls was not due to rent or space alone but due to political and religious tensions: Puritans opposed theater as morally suspect and as a reminder of Catholic practices.
The map of London’s theaters around 1600 shows multiple venues located in the outlying areas, signaling a political-religious constraint as much as a commercial opportunity.

The Religious Schisms and Their Influence on Theatre

Three major public factions in England after Henry VIII’s break with Rome:
- Catholics who secretly retained Catholic belief and loyalties despite official religious alignment with the Church of England.
- Anglicans who supported the Church of England and its governance, enjoying a level of alignment with Catholic practice yet critical of Catholicism’s authority.
- Puritans who advocated for further reform and purification of church practices; they viewed theater, especially sacramental or religiously oriented performances, as sinful and deceitful.
Puritans controlled London’s city government and worked to suppress or prohibit theatrical performances that touched on religious themes.
The broader religious civil conflict in England culminated after Shakespeare’s death in a civil war (the English Civil War), which temporarily closed theaters for about a generation.
The shift in religious power and the enforcement of secularization produced a new trajectory for theater: works that are secular, irreligious, and not explicitly connected to biblical or sacramental themes, paving the way for the rise of professional secular drama.
The idea of “areligious” or “irreligious” theater emerges: it is not anti-religion per se but explicitly avoids direct engagement with religious stories or sacramental content, a feature that shapes Shakespearean drama (e.g., the absence of on-stage weddings) and marks a transition from sacred to secular storytelling.

Shakespeare, Hamlet, and a World at War with Itself

The historical context preceding Hamlet’s appearance includes a culture in political and theological upheaval, with competing worldviews and a lack of a single binding cosmology.
The medieval Catholic worldview, the Protestant Reformation’s critique, and the Anglican settlement create a society that is culturally fractured and uncertain about foundational beliefs.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is framed as a product of this unsettled era, a drama that meditates on uncertainty and unknowing as its central existential condition.
A notable methodological note: the lecturer sets up a thought experiment to emphasize the protagonist’s crisis of certainty, focusing on the student as a proxy for the audience’s experience of unsettled reality and the uncanny.

Hamlet: The Thought Experiment and the Cognitive Frame

The thought experiment begins with the premise of a two-parent household (or two guardians) and a major personal loss (the death of a parent). It places the student in a situation akin to Hamlet’s own upheaval.
The sequence of shocks in the thought experiment culminates in a new, unfamiliar family dynamic (a surviving parent partners with the least favorite relative, who becomes a step-parent) and the intrusion of private texts and messages by the new parent into the student’s private life.
The uncanny (unheimlich) is described as a rearrangement of familiar space and relationships rather than a total loss; it’s a destabilization of the comfortable Heimlich (homely, familiar) world.
The experiment emphasizes the destabilization of an established social and familial order, which parallels Hamlet’s own destabilization in a world where old certainties no longer hold.
Horatio is introduced as Hamlet’s faithful friend in the domestic and academic sphere, mirroring the loyal companion in the play who offers counsel and truth in a time of crisis.
The speaker then locates Hamlet’s reality not in Denmark alone but in a historically specific space: the University of Wittenberg, a center of Protestant theology and a node of the Protestant Reformation.
This is not a gratuitous anachronism; it strategically highlights Hamlet’s possible Protestant sensibilities and the implications of theological education for his worldview and decisions.

Hamlet at the University of Wittenberg: Protestant Theology and Cosmology

Hamlet is depicted as a student at the University of Wittenberg, a hub for theological study and Protestant learning. This identification signals that Hamlet is educated within a Protestant framework, which has important implications for his view of authority, tradition, and the afterlife.
The historical note: Wittenberg is associated with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation; Shakespeare’s choice to place Hamlet there is an intentional anachronism that serves the play’s exploration of faith, doubt, and authority.
The ghost’s charge to Hamlet—avenge the murder—collides with the Protestant critique of Catholic doctrine (notably purgatory and indulgences) and raises questions about the legitimacy of sacred authority and the afterlife.
The ghost’s source is debated within different religious frameworks:
- If the ghost comes from purgatory (Catholic cosmology), it would validate Catholic belief in posthumous penance and the need to avenge a murder as part of moral order.
- If purgatory is rejected (Protestant view), the ghost may be a devil or demon attempting to lure Hamlet into sin (murder) and damnation, thereby testing Hamlet’s moral agency.
The idea of indulgences (as criticized by Luther) and the sale of time in purgatory is invoked to underline the theological fault lines of the era.
The ghost’s instruction to Hamlet thus sits at the intersection of competing cosmologies: Catholic purgatory, Protestant belief (no purgatory; possible demonic deception), and a broader culture of religious conflict.

The Uncanny, Cosmology, and the Modern Subject

Hamlet’s experience embodies a larger cultural drift: a society without a single center of meaning, where faction and belief are contested and unstable.
In this frame, Hamlet is described as one of the first modern subjects of world literature: an individual negotiating competing worldviews and cosmologies without a clear, authoritative truth.
The lecturer contrasts Hamlet’s epistemic insecurity with earlier protagonists (Oedipus, Medea, Jochiyanta, Tarandata, Tao Yi, Kumagai/Rensho) who hold strong, defined beliefs; Hamlet faces a crisis of belief without a settled answer.
The crisis is not merely personal; it reflects a broader historical shift in which communities and institutions (the church, the state, universities) are in flux and capable of fracturing under pressure.
The discussion foreshadows further exploration of how Hamlet’s decisions arise from this instability, and how later plays continue to navigate the tension between belief, doubt, and action.

Connections to Foundational Concepts and Prior Lectures

The medieval-to-Renaissance arc described here traces a continuum from liturgical drama (Dulcetius/Dulcitius; Ordo Virtutum) to mystery plays, to secular drama, and finally to the early modern theater world (the Globe and Shakespeare’s company).
Early plays (Dulcetius, Ordo Virtutum) were cloistered and Catholic; the shift toward lay performance marks a crucial historical transition in which the theater becomes a public and secular institution, while religion remains a central thematic domain in many works.
The concept of “sacramental theater” vs. secular theater is central: sacramental theater enacts religious mysteries; secular theater arises when religious restrictions are loosened and new spaces (taverns, courtyards, commercial theaters) permit performance that is not directly sacramental.
The move from a sacred to a secular space is not merely a change in venue but a transformation in the social function of theater: from a devotional practice to a commercial, artistically diverse, and ideologically contested public art.
The university settings (notably Wittenberg) emphasize the role of theology and education in shaping dramatic sensibilities and the reception of dramatic texts in the early modern era.
The structural features of the Globe—discovery space, three tiers, circle of seating, and the balcony—are important for understanding how early modern theater accommodated large crowds and created a dynamic relation between performers and audience.
The political-religious context in which Shakespeare wrote (Puritan opposition, Civil War threat, and eventual theater closure) informs the interpretation of his plays as products of a society in conflict and as explorations of moral ambiguity rather than explicit doctrinal positions.

Terminology and Key Concepts to Remember

Mystery plays: medieval plays based on Biblical stories staged as “mysteries” (mysteries of God and Bible stories), produced by trade guilds, performed in public spaces, often on carts traveling through town.
Sacramental theater: theater that enacts religious sacraments or sacred narratives; tied to Catholic ritual and liturgical contexts.
Areligious/Irreligious theater: secular theater that avoids direct religious content, a key development in the secularization of drama in early modern Europe; it allows dramatic exploration of kings, funerals, romance, and social life without touching biblical stories.
Proscenium arch: a framing of the stage that creates a “picture frame” around the performance; mentioned here as a conceptual precursor to later stage architectures.
Discovery Space (the Globe): the large opening in the stage that facilitated actor entrances from behind and contributed to the sense of a live, dynamic performance.
Theater in the round: seating around a central stage area; the Globe typifies this arrangement, enabling multiple viewing angles and audience proximity.
Indulgences: papal or church-issued documents that were believed to reduce time spent in purgatory; Luther’s critique of indulgences inspired the Protestant Reformation and the rejection of purgatory in Protestant theology.
Protestant Reformation: the schism initiated by Martin Luther’s criticisms of Catholic practices (e.g., indulgences), leading to the formation of Protestant churches and significant religious and cultural upheaval in Europe.
Puritans: a group within English Protestantism advocating further reform of church practices; they controlled London’s governance to suppress theater (seen as sinful and deceptive).
Areligious theater: a term for early modern theater that explicitly avoids religious subject matter in order to comply with Puritan restrictions and secularize drama.
Foregrounds of uncertainty: Hamlet’s world is characterized by uncertainty about truth, authority, and moral action, reflecting broader cultural uncertainty in early modern England.

Key Dates and Figures to Note

Mystery plays: popularity from around $ext{ca. }12^{ ext{th}} ext{ century}$ onward; late medieval to early modern transition.
Early religious dramas: Hildegard von Bingen’s era (around $ext{early 1st millennium}$ ) and earlier works like Dulcitius and Ordo Virtutum; cloister-based performances.
The Protestant Reformation: sparked in the early 16th century in Wittenberg with Martin Luther’s theses; the broader religious reform movement reshapes Christianity in Europe.
Henry VIII’s divorce and the Anglican settlement: 16th century; the break with Catholic Rome and the creation of the Church of England; this political-religious shift triggers the suppression of Catholic ritual in favor of Protestant worship and secularization of theater.
Hamlet: traditionally placed around $1599-1600$ , reflecting the era of religious and political upheaval in England; the play’s portrayal of uncertainty is anchored in the post-Reformation climate.

Final Takeaways for Exam Preparation

Mystery plays are key to understanding how medieval theater emerged from religious ritual, how lay participation and civic infrastructure shaped early drama, and how a religious crisis reoriented the purpose and form of theater toward secular, commercial venues.
The Globe and the tavern courtyard culture illustrate a gradual shift from sacred to secular performance spaces, while preserving drama as a vehicle for social and political commentary.
The English Reformation’s religious fragmentation (Catholic remnants, Anglican establishment, Puritan opposition) created a politics of culture where theater could exist only within a nuanced compromise—leading to a distinctly modern, secular stage without direct biblical content.
Hamlet sits at the intersection of these shifts: a protagonist formed in a Protestant academic setting (Wittenberg), navigating a world where competing cosmologies—Catholic purgatory, Protestant anti-purgatory, and potential demonic deception—define his ethical choices and the play’s central dilemma.
The study of Hamlet thus hinges on understanding the era’s religious schisms, the transformation of theatrical spaces, and the cultural anxiety about belief, authority, and the meaning of action in a world without clear, unified guidance.