Medieval Drama and Performance-Based Pedagogy

This article is under construction

This article is associated with the Folger Institute's 2016-2017 year-long colloquium on Teaching Medieval Drama and Performance, which welcomed advanced scholars whose research and pedagogical practice explore historical, literary, and theoretical dimensions of medieval drama from the perspective of performance.

Introduction

Medieval drama truly comes alive in performance. This is, of course, a statement true of all works in the dramatic genre. However, it is especially true of medieval drama, which frequently addressed in embodied form large and ultimate questions about humanity's place in creation and the scheme of history, and did so in direct and explicit relation to its audiences, with extraordinary emotive and affective range from the obscene to the exalted.

Miss Edith Wynne Matthison in the role of Everyman (c. 1902)

Medieval drama is integrated into the curriculum for theatre majors at most universities in the United States. However, there, rather than being part of acting technique or performance-based courses, or of staged productions, the subject is most often studied only very briefly in lecture courses like Theatre History. Meanwhile, in departments of literature, medieval drama is sometimes included as a topic in a broader medieval or British literature class or as a minor prequel to the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but it is seldom given much time or attention, and its performative nature is largely neglected.

But we would argue that medieval drama is accessible, exciting, adaptable, and inspirational to interested communities of all ages and abilities-from lower grade levels to highly-trained practitioners-for drama itself is the ideal synesthetic and interdisciplinary vehicle for community formation and differential learning. There is also contemporaneity in medieval drama: humor, music, and fun, as well as metaphor, allegories, and subtexts which speak to who we are today. And while the task of accessing this excitement may seem daunting, in this article we have put together a set of resources-combining language, action, and spectacle-to get you started.

The first step in bridging the gap between performance and literary study is alerting students and teachers to the new wealth of readily-available textual and general scholarly resources for these plays, which reach far beyond the frequently anthologized Everyman or the de-contextualized bit of a biblical cycle play.

Lesson Plans

The second step is to make at least a beginning at "putting the plays up on their feet." To that end we have supplied a series of ten performance-based Lesson Plans which build up from the rich relationship of word and thing, to considering the symbolic shape of an action, to preliminary training toward full performance and modern adaptation. While these Lesson Plans are designed as a sequence to support extended work, they may also be sampled and adapted strategically for shorter teaching units. Suitable for all kinds of students from the novice to the budding professional, they follow the format of the famous Folger Shakespeare Set Free teaching manuals, namely "What's On for Today and Why?," "What to Do?," and How'd It Go?" They offer some suggestions for how to capture the vitality of medieval drama in short time and limited space, and build on some of the best continuing scholarship in the field. They imply, as well, an on-going engagement in the developing interdisciplinary field of Performance Studies, which combines interest in the performing arts and literary theory with the fields of anthropology and sociology.

Verba et Res/Words and Things: The Speaking Picture of Medieval Drama

Lesson Plans 1-4: Verba et Res/Words and Things: The Speaking Picture of Medieval Drama

In the Biblical account that underwrites medieval drama, God gave man the power of naming, and thus united words and things.  But in the world we inhabit today, words are frequently separated from actions, and we are shy or disempowered, and read privately or do not know how to connect our words with what we do.  In order to move toward a fully embodied understanding and performance of the speaking picture that is medieval drama it can be helpful initially to separate its forceful but often seemingly unfamiliar language from its physical embodiment as images and things, to detach these words and things at first from their plots so as to familiarize them through defamiliarization before reintegrating them as performance.  Put simply, novice actors can speak, enjoy, and come to understand some words and phrases, or appreciate a concrete and symbolically-laden prop or a freeze-frame moment, as a preparation for integrating these words and things into a lively action.  Try some of these exercises with your students, and see how they will begin to become comfortable with some of the key words and things informing medieval drama, and begin as well to bond together into a company of players.

Lesson Plan 1: Playing around with medieval language

Lesson Plan 2: The twenty props you need to put on any medieval drama

Lesson Plan 3: Typology, or medieval living history

Lesson Plan 4: Typology, or medieval living history and tableau vivant

Setting the Medieval Stage

This lesson includes sections on "Playing around with language," "The twenty props you need to put on any early English drama," and an exercise on "Tossing Lines."

Medieval and early English drama, print and on-line editions

Print editions

The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama. Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian. Broadview, 2012.

Medieval Drama: An Anthology. Greg Walker. Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.

Three Late Medieval Morality Plays. G.A. Lester. New Mermaids, 2002.

York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling. Richard Beadle and Pamela King. Oxford University Press, 2009

Early English Drama: An Anthology. John C. Coldewey. Routledge, 1993.

Medieval Drama. David Bevington. Hackett, 1975.

The Arden Early English Drama series of texts from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries currently includes Everyman and Mankind. Douglas Bruster and Eric Rasmussen. Methuen Drama, 2009.

On-line editions

Online editions vary considerably in quality. Below are some that we have found to be well edited for both scholarly and pedagogical purposes.

Modernized

The N-town Plays

The York Plays

The Towneley Plays

Unmodernized

Many cycle, non-cycle, and early Tudor plays

The TEAMS Middle English Text Series

Page written by

Barbara J. Bono, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Maria S. Horne, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Michelle Markey Butler, University of Maryland