The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church PDF Author: Dunbar H. Ogden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Using original rubrics from some 1,200 manuscripts, this book demonstrates performance of the liturgical drama from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. It lays out the staging space and traces the movements of the performers on architectural ground plans. The rubrics reveal a wealth of information about the creating of character through ecclesastical vestments and other costumes. It also includes a surprising range of directives for voice, gesture, and dumb show. The book provides a major theatrical source book for students and scholars in the field of drama.

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church PDF Author: Dunbar H. Ogden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Using original rubrics from some 1,200 manuscripts, this book demonstrates performance of the liturgical drama from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. It lays out the staging space and traces the movements of the performers on architectural ground plans. The rubrics reveal a wealth of information about the creating of character through ecclesastical vestments and other costumes. It also includes a surprising range of directives for voice, gesture, and dumb show. The book provides a major theatrical source book for students and scholars in the field of drama.

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church PDF Author: Dunbar H. Ogden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Using original rubrics from some 1,200 manuscripts, this book demonstrates performance of the liturgical drama from the tenth through the sixteenth centuries. It lays out the staging space and traces the movements of the performers on architectural ground plans. The rubrics reveal a wealth of information about the creating of character through ecclesastical vestments and other costumes. It also includes a surprising range of directives for voice, gesture, and dumb show. The book provides a major theatrical source book for students and scholars in the field of drama.

The Medieval European Stage, 500-1550

The Medieval European Stage, 500-1550 PDF Author: William Tydeman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521246095
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 798

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Book Description
This volume brings together a wide selection of primary source materials from the theatrical history of the Middle Ages. The focus is on Western Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of markedly Renaissance forms in Italy. Early sections of the volume are devoted to the survival of Classical tradition and the development of the liturgical drama of the Roman Catholic Church, but the main concentration is on the genesis and growth of popular religious drama in the vernacular. Each of the major medieval regions is featured, while a final section covers the pastimes and customs of the people, a record of whose traditional activities often only survives in the margins of official recognition. The documents are compiled by a team of leading scholars in the field and the over 700 documents are all presented in modern English translation.

The Medieval Drama

The Medieval Drama PDF Author: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Los Angeles, Calif.)
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873950855
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
The religious medieval drama, like the Church which produced it, was international. As such, from its earliest beginnings in the tenth-century Quem quaeritis to the thirteenth-century Ludi Paschales and Passion Plays, it exhibits a cultural and thematic unity binding the various plays: a thematic unity from the fabric of Christian thought, and a cultural unity from the fact that these productions, at least up to the end of the thirteenth century, generally share a technical-philological medium: the Latin language. In later centuries, this religious drama expressed in the vernacular remained an act of faith; its purpose being to strengthen the faith of the worshippers and to express in visible, dramatic terms the facts and values of Christian belief. These essays were, in their original form, addressed to the third annual conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The work of international authorities on the medieval drama, they span many centuries and bear witness to the growth of the religious dramatic form and of the dramatic movement and temper of the liturgy in which that form finds its origin. Omer Jodogne establishes a difference, on the aesthetic level, between dramatic works and their theatrical performance by pointing out that the surviving texts, whether they were meant for reading or for a theatrical performance, reproduce only what was said on the stage, and, succinctly, what was done. Wolfgang Michael suggests that the first medieval drama did not originate in a slow growth from the Easter trope Quem quaeritis but was rather an original creation of the author or authors of the Concordia Regularis. He indicates that subsequent dramatic endeavors in their slow process of change and expansion reflect the working of tradition rather than an original spirit and form. Sandro Sticca examines the creation of the first Passion Play and shows that Christ's passion became increasingly popular in the tenth century, and that the new forces which allowed a more eloquent and humane visualization and description of Christ's anguish first appeared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He also refutes the traditional view that the Planctus Mariae is the germinal point of the Latin Passion Play. V. A. Kolve seeks to account for certain central facts about Everyman which have never had close critical attention. He analyzes the Biblical and Patristic references within which the story is shaped and which are central to the understanding of other actions and to determining the meaning of the play. Glynn Wickham, after exploding on the evidence of reference alone the old categorizing of English Saint Plays as by-products or late developments of Mysteries and Moralities, turns to a critical discussion of the three surviving texts of English Saint Plays and of their original staging by means of diagrammatic illustrations providing a vivid visualization of their performance. William Smolden takes an unaccustomed approach to the controversial question of the origins of the Quem quaeritis. He maintains that when musical evidence is called on, it brings about, on a number of occasions, a confutation of the theory of a "textual" writer. From a detailed consideration of the two earliest Quem quaeritis he feels convinced that the place of origin of the trope was the Abbey of St. Martial of Limoges.

Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages

Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages PDF Author: O. B. Hardison Jr.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421430878
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Originally published in 1965. The European dramatic tradition rests on a group of religious dramas that appeared between the tenth and twelfth centuries. These dramas, of interest in themselves, are also important for the light they shed on three historical and critical problems: the relation of drama to ritual, the nature of dramatic form, and the development of representational techniques. Hardison's approach is based on the history of the Christian liturgy, on critical theories concerning the kinship of ritual and drama, and on close analysis of the chronology and content of the texts themselves. Beginning with liturgical commentaries of the ninth century, Hardison shows that writers of the period consciously interpreted the Mass and cycle of the church year in dramatic terms. By reconstructing the services themselves, he shows that they had an emphatic dramatic structure that reached its climax with the celebration of the Resurrection. Turning to the history of the Latin Resurrection play, Hardison suggests that the famous Quem quaeritis—the earliest of all medieval dramas—is best understood in relation to the baptismal rites of the Easter Vigil service. He sets forth a theory of the original form and function of the play based on the content of the earliest manuscripts as well as on vestigial ceremonial elements that survive in the later ones. Three texts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries are analyzed with emphasis on the change from ritual to representational modes. Hardison discusses why the form inherited from ritual remained unchanged, while the technique became increasingly representational. In studying the earliest vernacular dramas, Hardison examines the use of nonritual materials as sources of dramatic form, the influence of representational concepts of space and time on staging, and the development of nonceremonial techniques for composition of dialogue. The sudden appearance of these elements in vernacular drama suggests the existence of a hitherto unsuspected vernacular tradition considerably older than the earliest surviving vernacular plays.

The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages

The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages PDF Author: Peter Meredith
Publisher: Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University
ISBN:
Category : Christian drama
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description


Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre

Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre PDF Author: Philip Butterworth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139991949
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
How was medieval English theatre performed? Many of the modern theatrical concepts and terms used today to discuss the nature of medieval English theatre were never used in medieval times. Concepts and terms such as character, characterisation, truth and belief, costume, acting style, amateur, professional, stage directions, effects and special effects are all examples of post-medieval terms that have been applied to the English theatre. Little has been written about staging conventions in the performance of medieval English theatre and the identity and value of these conventions has often been overlooked. In this book, Philip Butterworth analyses dormant evidence of theatrical processes such as casting, doubling of parts, rehearsing, memorising, cueing, entering, exiting, playing, expounding, prompting, delivering effects, timing, hearing, seeing and responding. All these concerns point to a very different kind of theatre to the naturalistic theatre produced today.

Medieval Theatre in Context

Medieval Theatre in Context PDF Author: John Wesley Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415067812
Category : Christian drama, Latin (Medieval and modern)
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description


The Medieval Theatre

The Medieval Theatre PDF Author: Glynne William Gladstone Wickham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521312486
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This is a thoroughly revised edition of Glynne Wickham's important history of the development of dramatic art in Christian Europe. Professor Wickham surveys the foundations on which this dramatic art was built: the architecture, costumes and ceremonial of the imperial court at Byzantium, the liturgies of countires in the Eastern and Western Empires and the triumph of the Roman rite and the Romanesque style in Western art. Within this context Professor Wickham describes three major influences upon the drama: religion, recreation and commerce. The first produced the liturgical music drama rooted in praise of Christ the King, vernacular Corpus Christi drama, Saint Plays and Moralities centred on the humanity of Christ. The second gave rise to the secular theatres of social recreation based on the games and dances of village communities ad the more sophisticated sex and war games of the nobility. The section on commerce shows how the development of the drama was intimately related to questions of funding and management which led, during the sixteenth century, to the substitution of a professional for an amateur theatre, and to a growing emphasis on stage spectacle. For this third edition the author has added a substantial section on monastic reform and its effect on Biblical translation and the use of allegory; a final chapter charts the transition in different European countries from this medieval Gothic theatre to the neoclassical methods of play construction and representation which flourished for the next two hundred years. The book gorges a coherent pattern through a very large and complicated subject. It is an excellent introduction to medieval theatre for undergraduates and to the growing number of theatregoers who enjoy contemporary revivals of medieval plays. A large plate section gives a pictorial version of the story, using photographs of contemporary manuscript illuminations, mosaics, frescoes, paintings and sculptures.

The Amateurs

The Amateurs PDF Author: Jordan Harrison
Publisher: Concord Theatricals
ISBN: 0573707847
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
An intrepid troupe of pageant players races across medieval Europe, struggling to outrun the Black Death. The arrival of a mysterious outsider sends Hollis, the leading lady, in search of answers that can only be found off-script... and soon the 14th century plague begins to look like another, more recent one. This wildly inventive and funny new work examines the evolution of human creativity in a dark age: when does a crisis destroy us, and when does it open new frontiers?