MEDIEVAL THEATRE ESSAY CANNILLA 1

Christina Cannilla
Washington Irving
March 9, 2020

Medieval Theatre
Using specific examples from theatre (Second Shepard’s Play and/or
Everyman), the arts, philosophy and technology, show how they intersect
with one another to form the Zeitgeist or Spirit of the Middle Ages.

After eight hundred years without theatre, following the fall of Rome, the Church began to

use drama to teach the stories of the Bible. For centuries, the Church was very much at odds with

the theatrical community. Plays were often seen as blasphemous and those who participated in it

were seen as pagans. The animosity between religion and art left many people feeling

disconcerted and isolated because they were torn between two conflicting interests. This

malevolence between Church and Theatre made their unification during the Medieval Era all the

more triumphant. The Church capitalized on the opportunity to bridge the divide between

religion and entertainment by popularizing Bible stories in ways that were relatable, comical, but

still didactic. In many ways, the unification of Church and Theatre acts as a mirror of which

reflects the zeitgeist of era as a whole.

A major encumbrance that the Church was facing prior to the Medieval Era was that the

Bible was not easily accessible to the common people. Church services were taught in Latin to

people who did not speak it, making it nearly impossible for the messages and teaching to be

understood, let alone spread. Thus, the creation of Morality plays, Miracle plays, and Mystery

plays offered a solution to this impediment that had perplexed the Church for centuries. By using
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pantomime and elementary language, the Church was able to reenact Biblical stories to the

common man.

There were three types of plays that existed during this time which all served as a conduit

for religious teaching using varying methods. The first was the Morality play. Morality plays

were dramas that were rooted in the spiritual trials of the average man. They formed a bridge

between the more direct Biblical plays, of which the other two types of plays tended to model,

and the secular dramas of the Renaissance. Morality plays were allegories about the moral

temptations which face every man. The Characters were symbolic and the action of the drama

was the battle between good and evil to posses man’s soul. An example is the play Everyman,

written in the late 15th century. Everyman, the titular character, is visited by Death. He is told

that he can take one friend with him on his long journey. He approaches Fellowship, Kindred,

Cousin, Goods, Knowledge, Discretion, Strength, Beauty, and Five Wits but all refuse. The only

friend who agrees to join him on his journey is Good Deeds. The moral of the play is very

obvious, which was an identifying characteristic of Morality plays.

The second type of play was classified as the Miracle play. It described lives and the works

of the saints. They were usually performed on a Saint’s Feast Day. Some of the scripts were

biblical, but others were not. An example of this would be the four St. Nicholas plays from the

Fleury Play-Book, written in the 13th century in France. They told the story of St. Nicholas

trapping the devil. These plays were presented, in Latin, on St. Nicholas Day which was

December 6th.

The final, and most significant, was the Mystery Play. The plot and characters were drawn

directly from the books of the Bible. This was the pinnacle of Medieval drama. The most
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elaborate example of Mystery plays were the cycle plays of England, specifically The York

Cycle. The York Cycle, written in the 14th century, contained forty-eight short plays and took

approximately 14 hours to perform. Of the forty-eight plays, eleven dealt with the Old

Testament, spanning from the Creation Story to the crossing of the Red Sea. Thirteen of the plays

covered the period from the Annunciation to Palm Sunday, one of the plays covered Judgement

Day and the remaining twenty-three covered the final week of Christ’s earthly life, including His

Assumption into Heaven.

But it wasn’t just the retelling of Bible stories that gave Medieval Theatre an idiosyncratic

identity, it was the way that the plays merged comedy with religion. The give and take

relationship of the seriocomic approach that these plays took is what makes these plays

representative of the zeitgeist of the Medieval Era. The Medieval Era saw the start of the

modernization of religion. What began as a strict and selective way of life that condemned

anything and everything that did not directly support its cause became a spiritual enlightening

that aimed to spread its message to anyone and everyone. The best demonstration of this is The

Second Shepherd’s Play.

Written in the mid 15th century, The Second Shepherd’s Play was a Mystery Play from the

Wakefield Cycle. The play is a retelling of the classic Nativity Story but it incorporates several

important differences that made it revolutionary from what had been seen before. The play

follows three Shepherds, Coll, Gyb, and Daw, who are lamenting about all the misfortune that

have caused them to be severely unhappy. The play makes a reference to an early Bible story

when one of the Shepherds, Daw, compares the storm to the storm from the Old Testament,

saying it is as powerful as Noah’s flood. The three then go on to sing a classic Nativity song,
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“The Holly and the Ivy”. Then we are introduced to a forth character named Mak, who is a

deceitful thief who hopes to steel one of their sheep. The plot then follows Mak and his wife Gill

attempting to deceive the Shepherds. Mak and Gill are eventually caught and although the

Shepherds could punish them with death, they choose to leave deciding that the humiliation was

punishment enough.

The story then picks up where the traditional Nativity story often begins, where the three

men are visited by an angel, who comes through an explosion of light and song. The

angel appears before them, singing “Gloria in excelsis Deo” and exclaiming that Christ has been

born. The angel prompts the shepherds to go visit the baby, who has just been born in Bethlehem.

The three shepherds are shocked but they immediately head for Bethlehem. They no longer care

about the woes that plagued them at the start of the play because they just want to see Christ.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, each shepherd presents a gift to the newborn baby which mimics

the gifts the wise men brought for the baby in the traditional Nativity story. The play ends with

the shepherds rejoicing and meeting baby Jesus because they know they have been redeemed.

Overall, the story has several stark differences from the Biblical story, which in many ways

makes it the ideal example of the zeitgeist of the Medieval Era. The Medieval Era saw a new

beginning for the Church as it began to embrace not only theatre, but the arts and technology in

general. All of which provides further evidence that the integration of comedy and modernization

of the Bible stories illustrates the vast growth the Church underwent during this time.