- The beginnings of
drama in England are obscure. The Romans built amphitheatres and
pruduced plays when they were in England but when they left their
theatre didn't survive.
- In the middle ages
there were jesters, clowns, tumblers and minstrels. The minstrel was
a link with the Anglo-Saxon scop, who sang the long poems of heroes
and the later theatre. The minstrel could be found at the king's
court, in castles, at tournaments and weddings or in the market
places.
- Officially the
church was against minstrels. At the same time the church officials
must have seen that the stories of minstrels encouraged pilgrims in
their journeys. The ritual of the church had itself something
dramatic whithin it and by the 10th century that ritual extended
into the rudiments of a play.
- Between the 13th
and the 14th centuries, the religious officials were discovering
that the dramatic elements in religious settings were growing
stronger than its religious purpose; immediately drama texts were
removed from the church cerimonial to be permformed outside the
church.
- The plays
themselves were no longer recited in Latin, but in Middle
English, and instead of the brief liturgical speeches, a long
dramatic script was invented around the biblical narratives. The
actors were members of the medieval guilds They
prepared for certain feast days, notably for the festival of Corpus
Christi a series of biblical plays.
Each play would be permormed on a pageant that would be drown from
one station to another.
- From the earliest
period of English literature into the early Elizabethan
period, drama had developped from a religious elaboration into a
secular and popular form of entertainment.
With this change of format, there had also been the development of professional
dramatic companies which took over from the traditional guilds.
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