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Drama Archive
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Corpus Christi Plays and the Stations of the Cross: Medieval York and Modern Sydney
Posted on April 1, 2013 | No CommentsThe earliest surviving reference to the Corpus Christi festival in York is dated 1322, when Archbishop William Melton commended it as „the glorious feast of the most precious sacrament of the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ‟. In 1408 the York Guild of Corpus Christi was established „as a confraternity of chaplains and lay persons, with the encouragement of the city government, probably to form the focus of the civic Corpus Christi Day procession‟. -
The Virgin Mary in High Medieval England, A Divinely Malleable Woman: Virgin, Intercessor, Protector, Mother, Role Model
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis examines the significance of the Virgin Mary in England between the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. The primary sources selected indicate the variety of ideas circulating about her during this period. Strictly religious texts such as the Bible and early Christian writings ground Late Medieval beliefs about Mary in their historical context. -
The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsIn the fifteenth-century Passion d'Auvergne, the rounding up of martyrs for persecution inspires torturer Maulbec to teach his cronies the words of a hunting song which imitates the cries of wounded animals. -
The Body of Christ: Sacred Street Theater in Medieval England
Posted on February 18, 2013 | No CommentsAs many as forty-six plays, amounting to more than thirteen thousand lines of verse, may have preceded the performance of the Doomsday play. Together they hit most of the highlights of the Christian canon and apocrypha. -
The Elder Edda Revisited: Past and Present Performances of the Icelandic Eddic Poems
Posted on January 18, 2013 | No CommentsWhat first struck me when I started my research on the Elder Edda is that, during the past four decades, several theatre practitioners have experimented with presentations of some of the poems and demonstrated that they can be highly effective in dramatic performance. -
Dancing Devils and Singing Angels: Dance Scenes in German Religious Plays
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe early Church had a mostly critical attitude towards the dance. It was said that those who dance cherish heathen godheads and that they allow their bodies rule over their minds. Repeatedly, the synods prohibited religious dances and/or dances within churches. -
English Mystery Plays – Staging Patterns and Orality Features
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsMedieval English theatre is a term covering a large body of plays, performances and theatrical activities. The entire period of medieval drama spans for five hundred years. -
Shakespeare’s Richard II: Machiavelli for the Good of England
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe name Machiavelli has negative connotations, and this way of thinking is not new. Throughout Europe, in Shakespeare’s time and earlier, Machiavellianism was associated with unscrupulous abuse of power, and Machiavellian methods were seen as immoral and evil. -
The Sad Death of a King: The Legacy of Richard the Second
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis will examine the manner in which Shakespeare drew upon existing sources material to depict a king whose inherent character flaws made him unworthy of his crown. -
Poculi Ludique Societas shows how to perform a Christmas play, medieval style
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsA Medieval Christmas: Go We hence to Bethlehem's Bower - playing this weekend in Toronto -
A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsWith such a model in mind, then, we have entered into a discussion of art, myth‐making, and the Primary World from a combined academic and artistic perspective. -
The Satanic Phenomenon: Medieval Representations of Satan
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe ever-evolving, interconnectedness of culture, religion, and superstition make for a truly unique theatrical experience in the middle ages. With limited understanding and access to scripture, medieval Christians generated a blended belief system, in order to make sense of the metaphysical world, which manifests itself in medieval drama‟s representations of Satan. -
Medieval Snuff Drama
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsThis was the piece that led to Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends. Over a decade later, I still find it fascinating that the Middle Ages had its own snuff stories, along with a host of other legends about all those mysterious things that never really happen at the theater . . . but people still believe them anyway. The medieval folklore puts to shame even all those legends about "method actors" going mad while playing madness. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. -
The Talking Brass Head as a Symbol of Dangerous Knowledge in Friar Bacon and in Alphonsus, King of Aragon
Posted on September 2, 2012 | No CommentsThe talking brass heads in Greene’s plays are descendants of two ancient traditions that became intermingled during the Middle Ages -
Places to Hear the Play: The Performance of the Corpus Christi Play at York
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsAt the beginning of the tradition, the pageants were linked to the religious procession on Corpus Christi Day. In the city og York this procession was organised by the Corpus Christi Guild as a separate event from the celebration of the minister. -
The Middle Ages after the Middle Ages. Medievalism in the Study of European Drama and Theatre History
Posted on August 15, 2012 | No CommentsIf we are going to acknowledge the afterlife of medieval genres, subject matters, motifs and techniques, three methods of research are preferable: 1. looking for simple continuity, 2. taking into account residual afterlife of medieval items in popular culture including folklore, and 3. recognizing the phenomena of the renewal of medieval genres in later ages. -
“Of all creatures women be best, / Cuius contrarium verum est:” Gendered Power in Selected Late Medieval and Early Modern Texts
Posted on August 14, 2012 | No CommentsWhile conjugal love was encouraged by the medieval Church, chastising women by their husbands was commonly practised in the late medieval and early modern periods. -
Female Body as Geosomatic Apotrope in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Middleton
Posted on July 19, 2012 | No CommentsAs a geographic trope transposed to literary discourse, discovery remains closely linked to the desire for possession. Postcolonial criticism has sought to deconstruct the feminized and sexualized discourses of geographic places and spaces as objects of desire, invasion, and annexation. -
The Use of the Rhetorical Exordium in Middle English Drama
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper I wish to single out one group of Middle English writings, the mediaeval drama, to examine more closely the interesting applications of the doctrine as exhibited in the "banns" of the miracle plays and of certain moralities, and in the traditional prologues, but es pecially in the more "organic" solutions arrived at by the authors of Man kind and Everyman. -
Gender and Violence in the Northern French Farce
Posted on June 24, 2012 | No CommentsI will briefly examine here the identity of farce's violent characters and their victims, as well as the deviant behaviors punished by comically violent means, ending with a brief discussion of the social conditions which, in my opinion, may have caused the farce's target audience to enjoy watching the aggressive correction of certain types of antisocial behavior in the century following the Hundred Years' War. -
Medieval Mystery Plays: Cain and Abel
Posted on June 16, 2012 | No CommentsMedieval mystery plays were cycles of plays, covering salvation history from the Creation to the Last Judgment, which were performed in England during the late Middle Ages. -
Craftsmanship of the Digby Mary Magdalene play
Posted on April 27, 2012 | No CommentsThe Digby Mary Magdalene is contained in the Digby MS. 133 of the Bodlein Library. Included in the Manuscript are three other plays, Killing of the Children, The Conversion of St Paul, and a portion of Wisdom. -
A historiographical and artistic survey of confraternities from the later Middle Ages to the early Renaissance
Posted on April 17, 2012 | No CommentsOverall, the analysis will allow for a closer examination of not just the culture of a particular confraternity, but also the cultural values, ideals, and practices of an entire community in one period of time. Furthermore, the examination of confraternal artwork will prove important, as it will demonstrate the unique power of confraternities. -
A Reassessment of the Feast of Fools: A Rough and Holy Liturgy
Posted on March 18, 2012 | No CommentsA younger contemporary of Richard of St.-Victor, Jean Beleth (fl. 1160), acknowledged the popular name of the feast: “The feast of the subdeacons, which we call ‘of fools’, by some is executed on the Circumcision, but by others on Epiphany or its octave.' -
The Medieval Pagent Wagons at York: Their Orientation and Height
Posted on February 24, 2012 | No CommentsThis article considers some physical aspects of the medieval pageant wagons used for the York Cycle. Many modern reconstructions have assumed that the pageants played side-on, but this view rests on assumptions derived from modern theatre, medieval two-dimensional art, or the demands of the open campus locations where many modern performances have taken place.