The mediaeval stage, volume 2 (of 2)Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever)
History
The mediaeval stage, volume 2 (of 2)
Chambers, E. K. (Edmund Kerchever)
Drama, Medieval -- History and criticism; Theater -- History -- Medieval, 500-1500
Examples of the transitional forms by which the liturgical drama grew
into the popular religious drama of the great cycles can also be found
in England. At Beverley a Resurrection play is described as taking
place in the graveyard of the minster about 1220. The intrusion of the
vernacular is represented by the curious bilingual text of a single
actor’s parts in the _Pastores_, _Quem quaeritis_ and _Peregrini_,
printed by Professor Skeat from a manuscript found at Shrewsbury. These
are probably still liturgical in character, and it is to be observed
that their subjects are precisely those of the three plays known to
have been used in the neighbouring cathedral of Lichfield. It must
remain a moot point whether the religious drama passed directly, in this
country, from Latin to English, or whether there was a period during
which performances were given in Norman-French. Scholars are inclined
to find an Anglo-Norman dialect in that very important monument of the
transition, the _Repraesentatio Adae_, as well as in an early example of
the expanded Easter play. But even if the authors of these were, like
Hilarius, of English birth, it hardly follows that their productions
were acted in England. Nor do the probable borrowings of the Chester and
other cycles from French texts much affect the question[364]. That the
disfavour with which the austerer section of the clergy looked upon the
vernacular religious plays had its spokesmen in England, was sufficiently
illustrated in the last chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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