Discuss the growth and development of Middle English drama. How did these plays contribute to the growth of Elizabethan drama ?
Answer: Briefly stated, the drama in England
developed from the liturgical play to the miracle play to morality, from the
morality play to the interlude, and from that to the "regular' drama of
the Elizabethan age. The story of this development is, however, not so simple
as it may wrongly appear. There are overlappings, aberrations, and missing
links.
As in Greece and many other
countries, the drama in England had a religious origin. It sprang from church
service as the ancient Greek tragedy had sprung out of the ceremonial worship
of Dionysus. As a critic well puts it, the "attitude of religion and drama
towards each other has been strikingly varied. Sometimes it has been one of
intimate alliance, sometimes of active hostility, but never of
indifference." In England the church was, in the beginning, actively
hostile to drama and all along during the Dark Ages (the 6th century to the
10th) there is missing any record of dramatic activity. Only in the ninth
century there were tropes or additional texts to ecclesiastical music. These
tropes sometimes assumed a dialogue form. They were, like church service, couched
in Latin. They were later detached from the regular service and presented by
themselves on religious festivals such as"Easter and Christmas. By and by
they took the form of "liturgical plays" after becoming somewhat more
complex. They were dramatisations of the major events of Christ's life, such as
the Birth and the Resurrection, and were enacted by priests right in the
church. These plays enjoyed a vast popularity. Thus, as Sir Ifor Evans
observes, "while at the beginning of the Dark Ages the church attempted to
suppress the drama, at the beginning of the Middle Ages something very much
like the drama was instituted in the church itself."
The Miracle and
Mystery Plays:
The next stage of development comes with miracle and mystery plays. The
early liturgical drama assumed the more developed form of the miracle and
mystery plays sometime in the fourteenth century, though, of course, there is
evidence that the first representation of a miracle play took place in
Dunstable as early as 1119.
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