conventions of the medieval drama (a report on everyman)

MEDIEVAL PERIOD

A Report on Everyman

Conventions during the Medieval Drama

• use of common language

• Staging–fixed stage–movable stage

• spectacle- costumes - music- special effects

• time management

• farce

Visual Aspect and Music

• Medieval drama was for the most part very religious and moral in its themes, staging and traditions. One of the most famous morality play and perhaps best known medieval drama is Everyman.

Visual Aspect

Music

• Medieval music was both sacred and secular.

• Singing without instrumental accompaniment was an essential part of church services.

Medieval Theatre5th-15th century

Medieval Playwrights and Their Contributions

• Hrotsvitha – 10th century German secular Canoness as well as

dramatist and poet who lived and worked in abbey of Gandersheim

several of her plays draw on the so called apocrypal gospels

Most well-known work is her version of Terence’s comedies

• Saint Hildegard of Bingen- German writer and a

philosopher

Her famous work is the Ordo Virtutum

Adam de la Halle - French born poet and musician

He wrote JEU de ROBIN et MARION

Elements of the play

Characters

• Messenger• God• Death• Everyman• Fellowship• Kindred• Cousin• Goods

• Good Deeds• Knowledge• Confession• Beauty• Strength• Discretion• Five Wits• Angel• Doctor

Plot

Themes

• Live for Tomorrow• The Deceptive Appearance of Sin• Material vs Spiritual Gain• God's Mercy• Final Judgment

Diction and DialogueEnd Rhyme• I perceive here in my majesty,

How that all the creatures be to me unkind, Living without dread in worldly prosperity: Of ghostly sight the people be so blind, Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God; In worldly riches is all their mind, They fear not my rightwiseness, the sharp rod; My law that I shewed, when I for them died, They forget clean, and shedding of my blood red; I hanged between two, it cannot be denied; To get them life I suffered to be dead.

• Death, God's messenger, often speaks in couplets:• Lord, I will in the world go run over all,

And cruelly outsearch both great and small; Every man will I beset that liveth beastly Out of God’s laws, and dreadeth not folly; He that loveth riches I will strike with my dart, His sight to blind, and from heaven to depart, Except that alms be his good friend, In hell for to dwell, world without end.

• Occasionally, there is no rhyme, as in the following lines spoken by Fellowship:• Now, by God that all hath brought,

If Death were the messenger, For no man that is living to-day I will not go that loath journey— Not for the father that begat me!

•

References

• http://www.msuiit.edu.ph/ipag/studies/drama/topics/medieval.html

• http://history-world.org/dynamic_culture_of_medieval_euro.htm