English drama in the Renaissance
turned from the sacred to the secular. Over the sixteenth century, medieval
religious plays gave way to the worldly subject matter of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean stage. This shift is marked by continuity as much as departure,
however, and Renaissance drama frequently adopts ideas from late medieval theatre.
Under pressures which made the production of religious plays all but
impossible, Renaissance dramatists transformed some of the traditional
character types and situations of native drama into new secular versions, and
thus appealed to an audience whose imagination had been formed by the old
mysteries, saint plays and moralities.
Mystery Plays
Before the Reformation, practically
all plays in England Chester , York ,
Wakefield , and Coventry
These forces were primarily
political. When in 1533 Henry VIII broke with Rome
and had himself proclaimed supreme governor of the Church in England Rome Rome Chester
cycle ended in 1574 (interestingly, the Mayor was summoned before the Privy
Council in 1575 to explain why an illegal performance had been permitted, and
pleaded that the citizens had demanded it), York
and Wakefield in 1576 and Coventry
Besides these changes in the
political and religious climate, certain cultural shifts may also have made the
mystery plays anomalous. Originally, performances of these dramatisations of
the scriptures may well have been more formal and stylised, recognisably linked
to the solemn enactment of the liturgy in church. With the rise of humanism and
naturalism, however, this formalism and sanctity was eroded by more robust and
irreverent characterisation of wicked or minor characters: hence Noah’s wife,
the three shepherds before they behold Christ, Cain and Herod all arise as
naturally expressive, human types. Such characterisation was incompatible with
the more abstract presentation of holiness, and so God and Christ ceased to
appear in the dramas, which were perhaps becoming an occasion for popular mirth
and festivity rather than a pious contemplation of the great mysteries. This
worldliness was echoed in staging which responded to public desire for a
gorgeous pageant: individual plays were usually financed by particular guilds,
who no doubt competed with each other to put on the most colourful show. Ironically,
it is these elements of the mysteries, arguably at odds with their original
purpose, which were the most influential on later drama: Shakespeare’s Shylock
is recognisably based on the lively devils of earlier mysteries; the provision
of an enjoyable spectacle was taken up by the London
Morality Plays
Like the mysteries, morality plays
instructed their mainly illiterate audience through theatrical entertainment.
But while mystery and miracle plays dramatize stories from the Bible and the
lives of the saints, morality plays deal with the struggle between vices and
virtues for the soul of man – a drama of internal spiritual struggle known as psychomachia. In this way conceptual
issues could be made concrete and memorable. Moralities are essentially
dramatized sermons, and their characters are personified abstractions
representing such things as Charity, Pride, Wealth, Death, Humility and so
forth. Their stories are not related to any specific days in the Church
calendar, and could thus be performed at
any time. As in the mystery and miracle dramas, performers were often amateurs
from the guilds, playing to popular audiences in yards, guildhalls and other
extempore settings.
About thirty morality plays
survive. From the fifteenth century among the best known are The Castle of Perseverance (c.1415), in
which the soul is a castle besieged by the forces of the devil, Mankind and Everyman (c.1495). The genre continued into the sixteenth century,
often taking on clear political resonances. In Skelton’s Magnifycence (c.1515) ‘a prince of great might’ (Magnificence)
dismisses Measure and is led astray by Vices (including Counterfeit Countenance
and Cloaked Collusion), before being rescued and returned to greatness by
Charity, Good Hope and Perseverance. The play is a clear satirical attack on
Cardinal Wolsey and his lavish spending habits. John Bale’s King Johan (1539) took the morality form
even further by having named characters: his protagonist is the historical King
John, who struggles to save Widow England
In the court of Henry VIII the
morality play effectively merges with the Interlude. Examples of ‘moral interludes’
include the anonymous Hickscorner
(c.1513) and Wever’s Lusty Juventus
(c.1510). Moral interludes include individuals as well as allegorical types
among the characters, and depict the Vices in increasingly comic terms: Pride,
Gluttony and Self-Love are characterised as clowns and buffoons. The rise of
the Vice to star performer is attested in other ways: while morality plays
usually involve a lot of doubling of parts, the Vice was played by only one
actor, who would be the most accomplished player. The actor playing the Vice
also collected money from spectators at halls and innyards: it was his performance
that drew in the crowds and the money. Unsurprisingly, it is the figure of the
Vice whonis most readily recognisable in later Renaissance drama: examples are
the servant Miles, who rides on the devil’s back in Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594), the
main character the Jew Barabas in Marlowe’s The
Jew of Malta (c.1589) and Wagenr in Dr
Faustus (c.1588). The latter play also shows the influence of the old
moralities in the debates of the Good and Bad Angels and the presentation of
the seven deadly sins. Various Shakespearean characters can also be traced back
to the anarchic morality Vice: Hal refers to Falstaff as ‘that reverend Vice,
that grey Iniquity’ (1 Henry IV,
2.5.413); Richard III declares ‘Thus, like the formal vice Iniquity, / I
moralize two meanings in one word’ (3.1.82); and Hamlet refers to his uncle
Claudius as ‘a vice of kings’ (3.4.88). In Shakespeare echoes of the morality
vice range from the childlike Puck in A
Midsummer Night’s Dream to Othello’s tormentor, the villainous Iago and to
the scheming and vengeful Edmund in King
Lear. In such characters Shakespeare picks up on and develops possibilities
latent in the simple morality dramas: the contending feelings of attraction and
repulsion that the Vice induces in us, the mixture villains can present of
attractive qualities (cleverness, observation, humour, realism) with depraved
moral intentions, and the spectrum of human wrongdoing, from playful
mischief to utter malevolence.
Besides the figure of the Vice,
combining laughter with literally devilish action, morality plays influenced
later Renaissance drama in other ways. They
establish the idea of psychomachia as
the central action. From Marlowe’s
Faustus to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet, it is this dramatic conflict
within the main character that is the focus of the drama. Morality plays and
interludes also incorporate topical material concerning government and social
order as subjects for drama. Hamlet’s description of players as ‘the abstract
[summing-up] and brief chronicles of the time’ (2.2.481) could be used of
earlier plays such as Skelton’s that used the morality form as a device to
comment on contemporary matters. The earlier dramas also employed stage
conventions that lived on in the scenes and gestures of later works. Powerful
scenarios such as that of Edgar, disguised as the beggar Poor Tom, leading his
blinded father Gloucester
Protestant Drama
Some writers in the earlier part of
our period used the form of medieval religious dramas as a vehicle for
Protestant propaganda. John Bale (1495-1563), an ex-Carmelite monk turned
zealous Protestant, wrote several plays (all c.1538-40) violently attacking
Catholicism. God’s Promises is a
Protestant mystery cycle, comprising seven scenes in which biblical figures
obtain a renewal of the covenant from God. The flavour of Three Laws is suggested by stage directions stipulating that Sodomy
should appear dressed as a monk, Ambition as a bishop, and Hypocrisy as a
Greyfriar. King Johan energetically
cheers on Henry VIII’s battle with the papacy. These works found little
official favour, however, and on the fall of his patron Thomas Cromwell, Bale
was forced to flee the country. Religious polemic on stage was perceived as
dangerous: it threatened to undermine the control of religious thought by the
authorities, and could moreover lead to public affray. Such presumably were the
motives behind the 1543 Act banning ‘interpretations of Scripture ... contrary
to the doctrine set forth, or to be set forth, by the King’s Majesty.’ In the
reign of Edward VI (1547-1553) the state turned more decisively to Calvinist
Protestantism and the influence of this theology can be found in some plays. Jacob and Esau (c.1557), possibly by
Nicholas Udall, clearly presents the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. In the
Prologue we are told that ‘Jacob was chosen and Esau reprobate’ and Isaac says
in prayer to God: ‘Of thy iustice, whom it pleaseth thee, thou doest reiect, /
Of thy mercy, whom [it] pleaseth thee, thou doest electe’ (ll.1473-4). Scholars
have debated how closely the theology of the play conforms to Calvinism, but
the general presence of the central idea is clear, as it is in A new enterlude ... of the life and
repentaunce of Marie Magdalene (printed 1566) by Lewis Wager. In this Protestant
adaptation of the Catholic saint play, Mary Magdalene is saved despite her
depraved past because she is elect. The utter despair of discovering that the
route to salvation is closed is dramatized in The Conflict of Conscience (c.1580) by Nathaniel Woodes, in which
the hero Philologus realizes that he is not elect. Theological differences over
the doctrine of predestination can be found in the texts of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (both of these appeared
after his death, and incorporate material clearly added later, so neither is a
secure guide to the first performance): in the A Text (1604) the Good Angel
says ‘Never too late, if Faustus can repent’. In Calvinist terms, the
reprobate, or unelected, is unable to repent because God witholds the grace needed
for this – Claudius’s inability to repent although he wishes to (Hamlet, 3.3.36-72) may similarly
indicate his predestined damnation. The B Text of Faustus (1616) changes ‘can
repent’ to ‘will repent’, with the implication that repentance lies in the will of Faustus:
his faith rests with him and is not predetermined.
Doctor
Faustus (c.1588) was the last overtly religious play to appear on the
Renaissance stage. Acting companies and their managers must have felt that
treatment of doctrine was simply too dangerous for the public stage. The Old
Testament, in particular the Apocrypha, provided safely uncontroversial
material for some plays (Thomas Garter, Godly
Susannah (1568); George Peele, The
Love of King David and Fair Bathsheba (1594)), and the histories of
Josephus furnished the source for Lady Elizabeth Carew’s Mariana, the Fair Queen of Jewry (1613). But religious drama
effectively disappeared from the stage. Milton
