3º ESO
Medieval Literature
Mystery Plays
SECCION BILINGÜE
William Shakespeare
IES ‘MARIA ZAMBRANO’ – LEGANES (Madrid)
Literary Contents
3º ESO-Sección
Curriculum Avanzado
- The medieval theatre: Features.
-The Renaissance. Features:
- The Sonnet and its introduction in England.
-The theatre of William Shakespeare.
Historical work-Comedies-Tragedies.
MEDIEVAL THEATRE
Medieval theatre refers to the theatre in
the period between the fall of the Western
Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D. and
the beginning of the Renaissance in
approximately the 15th century A.D.
Medieval theatre covers all drama produced
in Europe over that thousand year period
and refers to a variety of genres, including
liturgical drama, mystery plays, morality
plays, farces and masques. Beginning with
Hrosvitha of Gandersheim in the 10th
century, Medieval drama was for the most
part very religious and moral in its themes,
staging and traditions. The most famous
examples of medieval plays are the English
cycle dramas, the York Mystery Plays, the
Chester Mystery Plays, the Wakefield
Mystery Plays and the N-Town Plays, as well
as the morality play, Everyman.
A performance from the Chester mystery play cycle.
MEDIEVAL THEATRE
Due to a lack of surviving records and
texts, a low literacy rate of the general
population, and the opposition of the
clergy to some types of performance,
there are few surviving sources on
medieval drama of the early and high
medieval periods. However, by the late
period, drama and theatre began to
become more secularized and a larger
number of records survive documenting
plays and performances.
Stage drawing from 15th-century
vernacular morality play The Castle of Perseverance.
MEDIEVAL THEATRE
As the Viking invasions ceased in the
middle of the 11th century A.D., liturgical
drama had spread from Russia to
Scandinavia to Italy. Only in Muslimoccupied Spain were liturgical dramas not
presented at all. Despite the large
number of liturgical dramas that have
survived from the period, many churches
would have only performed one or two
per year and a larger number never
performed any at all.
The Feast of Fools was especially
important in the development of comedy.
The festival inverted the status of the
lesser clergy and allowed them to ridicule
their superiors and the routine of church
life. Sometimes plays were staged as part
of the occasion and a certain amount of
burlesque and comedy crept into these
performances.
The importance of the High Middle Ages
in the development of theatre was the
economic and political changes that led to
the formation of guilds and the growth of
towns. This would lead to significant
changes in the Late Middle Ages. In the
British Isles, plays were produced in some
127 different towns during the Middle
Ages. These vernacular Mystery plays
were written in cycles of a large number
of plays: York (48 plays), Chester (24),
Wakefield (32) and Unknown (42). A larger
number of plays survive from France and
Germany in this period and some type of
religious dramas were performed in nearly
every European country in the Late
Middle Ages. Many of these plays
contained comedy, devils, villains and
clowns.
MEDIEVAL THEATRE
At the end of the Late Middle Ages, professional
actors began to appear in England and Europe.
Richard III and Henry VII both maintained small
companies of professional actors. Their plays were
performed in the Great Hall of a nobleman's
residence, often with a raised platform at one end
for the audience and a "screen" at the other for
the actors. Also important were Mummers' plays,
performed during the Christmas season, and court
masques. These masques were especially popular
during the reign of Henry VIII who had a House of
Revels built and an Office of Revels established in
1545.
Henry VIII of England loved court masques
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
The English Renaissance was a cultural and
artistic movement in England dating from the late
15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th
century. It is associated with the pan-European
Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning
in Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of
northern Europe, England saw little of these
developments until more than a century later.
Young Man Among Roses, portrait miniature
by Nicholas Hilliard, 1588, V&A.
Believed to be the Earl of Essex
The beginning of the English Renaissance is often
taken, as a convenience, to be 1485, when the
Battle of Bosworth Field ended the Wars of the
Roses and inaugurated the Tudor Dynasty.
Renaissance style and ideas, however, were slow
in penetrating England, and the Elizabethan era in
the second half of the 16th century is usually
regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.
Literature
England had a strong tradition of literature in the English vernacular, which gradually
increased as English use of the printing press became common by the mid 16th century.
By the time of Elizabethan literature a vigorous literary culture in both drama and poetry
included poets such as Edmund Spenser, whose verse epic The Faerie Queene did not
become a dominating influence on English literature in the way that some foreign
equivalents did for their countries. Instead the lyrics of William Shakespeare, Thomas
Wyatt and others, typically circulating in manuscript form for some time before they were
published, and above all the plays of English Renaissance theatre, were the outstanding
legacy of the period.
The English theatre scene, which performed both for the court and nobility in private
performances, and a very wide public in the theatres, was the most crowded in Europe,
with a host of other playwrights as well as the giant figures of Christopher Marlowe,
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Elizabeth herself was a product of Renaissance humanism
trained by Roger Ascham, and wrote occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure
at critical moments of her life. Philosophers and intellectuals included Thomas More and
Francis Bacon. All the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated, as was much
of the nobility, and Italian literature had a considerable following, providing the sources
for many of Shakespeare's plays. English thought advanced towards modern science with
the Baconian Method, a forerunner of the Scientific Method. The language of the Book of
Common Prayer, first published in 1549, and at the end of the period the Authorised
Version ("King James Version" to Americans) of the Bible (1611) had enduring impacts on
the English consciousness.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare
(26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)
was an English poet and playwright,
widely regarded as the greatest writer in
the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist.
He is often called England's national poet
and the "Bard of Avon”. His extant works,
including some collaborations, consist of
about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long
narrative poems, two epitaphs on a man
named John Combe, one epitaph on Elias
James, and several other poems. His
plays have been translated into every
major living language and are performed
more often than those of any other
playwright.
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he
married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet
and Judith.
Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and
part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the
King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he
died three years later.
Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable
speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs,
and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.
His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of
sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century.
He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello,
and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last
phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other
playwrights.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace,
in Stratford-upon-Avon.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s PLAYS
Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and
critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career. Some
attributions, such as Titus Andronicus and the early history plays, remain controversial,
while The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio have well-attested contemporary
documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that several of the plays were
revised by other writers after their original composition.
The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI,
written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are
difficult to date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The
Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also
belong to Shakespeare’s earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the
1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland,
dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a
justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty. The early plays were influenced by the
works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe,
by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors
was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been
found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived
from a folk story. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to
approve of rape, the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a
man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s PLAYS
Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and
precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his
greatest comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy
magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic
Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock,
which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences. The wit
and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like It,
and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great
comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare
introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and
Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between
comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his
mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the
famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius
Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives —which
introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in
Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events,
even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other“.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s PLAYS
In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for
Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best
known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the
peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet,
has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially
for his famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be; that is the question“. Unlike the
introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that
followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement.
The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which
overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In Othello, the villain Iago stokes
Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him.
In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the
events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of
Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers
neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty".
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’s PLAYS
In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of
Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites
Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful
king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them
in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element
to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and
Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest
poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by
The reconstructed Globe Theatre, London.
the poet and critic T. S. Eliot.
In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or
tragicomedy and completed three more major plays:
Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the
collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the
tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies
of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the
forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators
have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene
view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the
theatrical fashion of the day.[102] Shakespeare collaborated on
two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble
Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.
ENGLISH POETS
COURTLY POETRY
Edmund Spenser
With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court
sympathetic to poetry and the arts in general emerged. This
encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often set
in, an idealised version of the courtly world.
Among the best known examples of this are:
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which is effectively an extended
hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip Sidney's Arcadia. This courtly trend
can also be seen in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender. This poem marks
the introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral, a mode of
poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude
to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of
William Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also
implies a courtly audience.
ENGLISH POETS
Classicism
Virgil's Aeneid, Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's
Shepheardes Calender and plays like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are
all examples of the influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained
common for poets of the period to write on themes from classical mythology;
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and the Christopher Marlowe.
George Chapman Hero and Leander are examples of this kind of work.
Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions
of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1565–67) and George Sandys
(1626), and Chapman's translations of Homer's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey
(c.1615), among the outstanding examples.
Jacobean and Caroline poetry
English Renaissance poetry after the Elizabethan poetry can be seen as
belonging to one of three strains; the Metaphysical poets, the Cavalier poets
and the school of Spenser. However, the boundaries between these three
groups are not always clear and an individual poet could write in more than one
manner.
ENGLISH POETS
The Metaphysical poets
John Donne
The early 17th century saw the emergence of this group of
poets who wrote in a witty, complicated style. The most famous
of the Metaphysicals is probably John Donne. Others include
George Herbert, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan,
Andrew Marvell, and Richard Crashaw.
John Milton in his Comus falls into this group. The Metaphysical poets went out
of favour in the 18th century but began to be read again in the Victorian era.
Donne's reputation was finally fully restored by the approbation of T. S. Eliot in
the early 20th century.
The Cavalier poets. The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, more elegant and
artificial style than the Metaphysical poets. Leading members of the group
include Ben Jonson, Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Edmund Waller,
Thomas Carew and John Denham. The Cavalier poets can be seen as the
forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era, who admired them greatly.
THE END