BEGINNING OF ENGLISH DRAMA

INTRODUCTION

From classical Greek times, and in many other cultures, drama has maintained strong religious
connections. The origins of English drama are religious too. Drama and religious ritual seem to have
been bound up with each other during the earliest stages – folk celebrations, ritual meaning of such
elemental themes as death and resurrection, seasonal festivals with appropriate symbolic actions –
these lie in the background of the dramas in their developmental stage.

FIRST STAGE

It was the religious elements that resulted in the development of drama. As most of the Bible was
written into Latin, common people could not understand its meanings. That’s why the clergy tried to
find out some new methods of teaching and expounding the teachings of Bible to the common people.
For this purpose, they developed a new method, wherein the stories of the Gospel were explained
through the living pictures. The performers acted out the story in a dumb show.

MYSTERIES AND MIRACLE PLAYS

In the next stage, the actors spoke as well as acted their parts. Special plays were written by the clerics,
at first in Latin and later in the vernacular French. These early plays were known as Mysteries or
Miracles. The very word Mystery shows its ecclesiastical origin, since the word comes from the
French Mystere derived from ministere, because the clergy, the ministerium or ministry
ecclesiae, themselves took part in these plays. In England the term Miracle is used indiscriminately for
any kind of religion play, but the strictly speaking the term Mystery is applied to the stories taken from
the Scriptures narrative, while Miracles are plays dealing with incidents in the lives of Saints and
Martyrs.

Miracle Play, or Mystery Play, in medieval Europe, a dramatization of a story from the Bible or the life
of a saint. In France, miracle play referred only to a play depicting the life of a saint, and mystère
(mystery play) to one based on a Bible story. The terms were used interchangeably in England.

The miracle play developed from the trope, a few lines of dialogue dramatizing part of the Mass and
acted out during the Mass for the edification of the worshipers, who did not understand Latin. At first,
tropes were written in Latin and performed by the clergy. Gradually, as many different Bible scenes
were enacted and the plays grew more complex, the whole town became responsible for their
production. Clergymen were no longer the actors, the plays were written in the common language
rather than Latin, and the performances were moved from the church to the marketplace.