Talk:Medieval theatre/Archive 1

Archive 1

Surviving texts

This article says no texts of secular medieval theatre survive. This is not so. "Clerico et Puella" is a 14th century playtext from England that is clearly secular drama, and exists in a vernacular analogue called Dame Sirith. There is also an Anglo-French text called "the blind man and the boy", possibly a continental example, and there are numerous German Fastnachtspiele (Carnival plays) on non-religious topics from the 14th-16th centuries.

John lydgate wrote 15th century "mummings" for the royal court, which are drama of a simple sort: the actors mimed their parts with elaborate costumes, and a speaker narrated the plot over them. We might not categorise these as "theatre proper", but that was not a medieval category (1st use of the word dates from 1515 referring to ancient Greek plays, not contemporary practice).

I also suggest that Medwall's "Wit and Science" and "Fulgens and Lucrece" are secular medieval plays, with a developing humanist ethic that one might call "Renaissance". Likewise John Skelton's "Magnyfycence" is from the "morality tradition" of allegorical plays, but is a secular courtly satire.

Of course, we tend to think of these as "Renaissance" plays because they hint towards the future, to Shakespearean drama, and are therefore blind to their strongly medieval characteristics. Unfortunately, there seems to be a great resistance to accepting that medieval plays weren't always religious!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 163.1.167.69 (163.1.167.69) 17:21, 11 Mar, 2007 (UTC).

The article doesn't state that no texts from secular survive from the era. In fact, it even names "The Boy and the Blind Man" that you give as an example. When the last sentence of the third paragraph says that, "Not much is known about these performers' repertoire and no written texts survive," it is referring to the antecedents of the previous sentence: "mimes, minstrels, bards, storytellers, and jugglers." No secular texts from THESE types of performers survive.

Aside from that misunderstanding, I suggest you edit the article to include your vast knowledge of medieval theatre. Wikipedia will only get better if people like you improve it.--Cassmus 22:11, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Profane theater, abele spelen

I came across the phrase "profane theater" (secular Medieval theatre?) and several Dutch articles mention "abele spelen". If anyone knows Dutch, there is an article on it at NL wikipedia that would be nice to get traslated. Goldenrowley 03:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

pagan survivals

The writer(s) asserts that some secular plays might be "carryovers from the original pagan cultures (as is known from records written by the clergy disapproving of such festivals)." No offense, but this is nonsense. If it is true, then cite the clergy records and tell us what era they date from. My guess would be that any such records are relatively early, thus, not relevant to the discussion of the emergence of secular drama in the later middle ages. It also reflects a current popular misconception that there was a sharp disjunction between life-loving pagan peasants and nasty old life-hating Christian clergy. That is far too simplistic a way of looking at the interplay of peasants and clergy, folk beliefs and educated beliefs, in the middle ages. (For a quick look at these conflicts (relating to the Cathar heresy) try Leroi Ladurie's Promised Land of Error, which paints a complex portrait of a community essentially under siege from the ecclesiastical authorities.) There's also a bit of a logic problem in the statement; just because some clergy disapproved of some festivals it doesn't follow at all that said festivals later became the basis for secular drama – the two are not linked, except in the writer's mind.

In any event, I would suggest deleting the phrase unless and until it can be give a reference that relates specifically to the time under discussion, i.e., the later middle ages.Theonemacduff (talk) 19:12, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

locus and platea

These are not quite stage types, but a naming of certain features of the medieval staging area, based on medieval terms, but to some extent "recycled" by modern writers following the East German critic Robert Weimann, who re-configured these ancient terms explicitly in terms of class theory, and Brechtian theories. Janette Dillon, for example, in her Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre (pp4-16) says that these terms are ways of conceptualizing the use made of space by medieval players, but she fails to introduce a clear enough distinction between the older usage of the terms and the newer, heavily theorized uses, to which she herself is putting them. Dillon notes that she is adopting Weimann's usage (she calls his work "ground-breaking") but in the event, her analysis is not particularly convincing, because there is no reason to suppose – and she proposes no evidence on the point – that the medieval players ever conceptualized their own use of space in the theorized way she suggests. In fact, given that the basis of theay.

Bottom line: I am altering the references to locus and platea, and associated terms. The discussion as written was confusing and hard to follow. Theonemacduff (talk) 19:30, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

You need to read Wickham's five-volume work Early English Stages.  • DP •  ^{huh?} 02:57, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Tone of article

The tone of the article is problematic. It seems to assert that "medieval theatre" was one very particular style of theatre that existed only in the Middle Ages and died out at or shortly after the start of the Renaissance. The "Decline and change" section specifically creates this impression, especially as its first sentence started out with "Its death was due mostly to..." I first fixed the very vague "Its", and then fixed the incorrect assertion that medieval theatre was a type of theatre that died. The article should be written more as an explanation of the state of theatre in the Middle Ages, rather than an artificial construct of "medieval theatre" as this distinct entity from other theatre. There were many forms of theatre in the Middle Ages, and they evolved during the Middle Ages, some evolving into forms common during the Renaissance, like Commedia dell'arte, and kept evolving into the modern theatre of today. Mmyers1976 (talk) 19:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)