Main directions of the English Literature in the Early Middle ages

16.CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA AND THEATRE. There were fine works of poetry and prose in the Elizabethan age, but the greatest heights of literature at that period were reached in drama.The Middle Ages knew religious drama; the Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities as they were called. The Mystery plays dramatized episodes from the Bible; the Miracle plays, episodes from the lives of saints. Morality plays were allegorical, and dedicated to the struggle of the various virtues and vices for the human soul; more often than not, the vices and even the devil himself were shown in such plays in comic aspect. Between the episodes of these plays, comic scene were usually acted that bore almost no relation to the story, these were called interludes.

There was another type of performance in English cities the pageants; these were pantomimes re-enacting episodes from the history of that particular city. These pageants were the some of the historical plays) for which the English Renaissance drama is famous.

Sixteenth century England also knew a third type of performance plays staged by university students; they were plays by Roman dramatists, Seneca(tragedies), and Plautus and Terence(comedies), acted in Latin. Later on, original English plays written in imitation of these authors began to appear.Such were the foundations of the glorious English drama of the Renaissance.By the middle of the 16th century there were companies of strolling actors who

performed in town squares, inn yards, and in the manors of the nobility. In 1572 Queen Elizabeth passed a degree against vagabonds , by this decree travelling actors were alsoto be considered as a vagabonds and treated as such, that is, with the almost barbarity.

The only exception made was for those that were in the service of some nobleman. Many of these companies enlisted as servants of some peer, of course only nominally, and began settle down. In 1576, the company of the Earl of Leicester’s Men built the first regular playhouse, designed specially for performances, and called it, approximately enough, ‘The Theatre’ (a Greek word never used in England before); it was open to the sky, except for a sheltered gallery on three sides, and the stage was a large raised platform that came out into the audience like a sort of peninsula. No women were allowed to act, and all the female parts in plays were taken by boys. (The first actress in England appeared after the Restoration of 1660.)

Thus, theatres began to be stabilized, and their popularity kept growing. They gave public performances, and were also invited to the court. The most prominent theatre manager at the turn of the century was Philip Henslowe, whose son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, was the foremost tragedian of his generation.As the public became more demanding and the art of theatre developed, old plays were considered too primitive.