Dramatizations of Christ’s redemptive sufferings and death developed centuries later than Easter plays, possibly because the Mass itself was understood as a daily representation of the Passion; some medieval commentators even explained the actions of the Mass in dramatic and theatrical terms. Little evidence remains for the performance of from the Gr. Byzantine trad. Notable is a 13th-c. scenario of a text, probably of Cypriot origin, from which we can reconstruct that opens with the Raising of Lazarus and concludes with the scene of the Doubting Thomas. Conversely, the disputed Christos paschon is now recognized as a skillful literary exercise rather than a true play. Cycles of dramatic homilies, some of very early date, include Passion material, but it is not clear how these were presented.
Evidence for the performance of Med. Lat. is more substantial, but few texts survive. The earliest is probably the mid 12th-c. monastic music-drama from Monte Cassino that introduces a vernacular planctus of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross. A later fragment from Sulmona suggests a related, considerably longer play. The famous Carmina Burana ms. from Benediktbeuern contains two p. ps. dating from the 12th or 13th c.: the shorter Ludus (play) composed entirely of Lat. prose probably draws on a Gospel harmony; the longer Ludus is a complex drama combining spoken and sung text in prose and verse, incl. significant passages in Ger.
Vernacular p. ps. flourished in Western Christianity from the early 14th until the late 16th c. Authors, often clerical, employed established as well as experimental verseforms and also prose. Some plays constituted true music-dramas; others contained occasional hymns, songs, and instrumental music. Sources of the various episodes incl. the Bible, apocryphal and legendary material, narrative poems, lyric laments, and meditative texts. Allegory, humor, ribaldry, and farce were introduced. were also influenced by the iconography of the visual and plastic arts, for which they in turn inspired further developments. The production of p. ps. could call upon the resources and organizational efforts of religious orders, lay confraternities, trade guilds, even entire towns. They were acted, often with considerable spectacle, in or near churches, along processional routes, in public squares, in earthen amphitheaters in Cornwall, and in the Colosseum at Rome. Performance time varied from under an hour to several days, in extreme cases to days. The plays were usually presented during Holy Week and Easter Week, on or around the warm-weather feasts of Whitsun and Corpus Christi.
In Italy, brief music-dramas based closely on Gospel accounts formed the original nucleus of the extensive repertory of the flagellant confraternities that came to embrace dramatizations for the main feasts of the Liturgical Year. From the 15th c., such groups tended to specialize in producing a small number of plays, such as the influential Roman p.p.
In France, the 15th c. was the great age of spectacular The Passion of Semur dramatizes material from Creation to Ascension in numerous relatively short scenes. The longer Passion of Arras, attributed to the rhetorician Eustace Mercadé, deals only with the Life of Christ but frames it with scenes of the Debate of the Four Daughters of God. But the most accomplished Fr. is that by Arnoul Gréban, theologian and choirmaster at Notre Dame de Paris.
In the Sp. trad., brief vernacular plays were performed in conjunction with the ceremonies of Holy Week; such a play may have made use of the famous articulated figure of Christ in Burgos Cathedral. Plays on Passion material were also among those presented with the use of pageant wagons during Corpus Christi rituals and processions. Missionaries brought America, where they merged with native trads.
The great Eng. cycle plays connected with the celebrations and processions of Corpus Christi dramatize salvation history from Creation to Doom. Of central importance are the pageants devoted to events of the Passion; noteworthy among these are the compositions of the so-called “Wakefield Master” and “York Realist.”
The term is sometimes used with special reference to the Ger. trad., which is particularly rich. The. from St. Gall, considered the most complete and typical of 14th-c. works, shows the persistence of Lat., which is employed symbolically for the speeches of the most sacred characters. Later Ger. plays parallel the Fr. in complexity and spectacle; texts often provide detailed instructions for staging, as those from Alsfeld, Donaueschingen, and Lucerne. Most widely known is the controversial Oberammergau a product of the Catholic Reform but still performed periodically to this day. Recent years have witnessed a burgeoning of interest in of all national trads.; and performances by professional and amateur groups have confirmed the realization that these are not just works of literary art but true dramas that must be brought to life in order to be appreciated.
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