| Marlowe's play (and, to some degree, Shakespeare's
I Henry IV) owes a lot to the medieval dramatic
tradition. Medieval plays are generally broken into three
categories: mystery, miracle, and morality plays. Medieval
mystery plays enact events of the Bible, while medieval miracle
plays focus on enactments of the miracles performed by the
saints. Mystery plays were performed in cycles in many
countries, including England, and are still performed in
Oberammergau, Germany. In England, the cycle plays were
connected with the feast day of Corpus Christi. Various short
pageants representing portions of the bible were performed by
various trade guilds. The Chester cycle contains 25 plays,
while there are nearly 50 in the York cycle. These plays, often
characterized by humor as well as by religious content, were
popular in England from the 13th to the 16th centuries.
Unlike the medieval mystery plays, which were generally part
of dramatic cycles presented on a religious holiday, the morality
play was designed to stand alone. Though both types of plays
often contained allegorical characters, the morality play
centered on the allegorical element, focusing on allegorical
representations of moral issues. The hero is generally a
representative character, related to all Christians. He is
surrounded by allegorical figures who represent abstractions of
the issues he must confront. Perhaps the most famous is Everyman,
featuring a hero named Everyman who represents (get this) every
man. The rest of the play is equally subtle.
Everyman, confronted by Death, tries to turn to his friends
Kindred and Goods for help, but finds they leave him. He
must turn to Good Deeds and Knowledge to lead him on the path to
heaven. The general plotline of such morality plays
typically follows the spiritual crisis of an individual
Christian who must choose between characters representing good
and evil.
This psychomachia, or the externalization of the internal
battle between good and evil over the fate of the soul, is
central to most of these plays. Doctor Faustus
borrows many of the conventions of the morality play, especially
the psychomachia represented by the Good and Bad Angels.
The struggle often also includes tempting characters such as the
devil or characters who represent various vices. These
Vice characters serve as inspiration for various characters in
Renaissance drama--you will see that Hal refers to Falstaff as
"that reverend Vice."
For more details on medieval drama, go to an interesting
set of links, found at:
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/theatre/emd/links.htm |
