Liturgical Drama

Liturgical Drama, plays based on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Considering the drama inherent in its subject, it is not surprising that the mimetic instinct in man, driven underground by the Early Fathers, should have broken out again in the celebration of the Mass, particularly at Easter and Christmas. The service itself provided the bare bones of a plot, and the introduction of antiphonal singing, which may have owed something to the memory of the Greek chorus, paved the way for the use of dialogue. As church services became more elaborate, the vocal additions took on dialogue forms. The best known and most important of these, from a dramatic point of view, was the Quem quaeritis? (Whom Seek Ye?) sung on Easter morning. From a short scene in front of the empty tomb sung by four male voices, this soon developed into a small drama of three or four scenes covering the main events of the Resurrection. Later detached from the Mass and performed separately, it was followed by the Te Deum, and so merged into Matins.

An important step forward in dramatic evolution was taken with the introduction of extraneous lyrics to be sung by the three Marys as they approached the tomb, and an even greater one when comic characters, with no scriptural basis, were introduced in the persons of the merchants who sold spices to the women for the embalming of Christ's body. They probably appeared first in Germany, and were a counter-influence on the late liturgical play from the secular vernacular drama which had developed alongside it and partly under its influence.

A further Easter play, enacted at Vespers and perhaps modelled on the Quem quaeritis?, was the Peregrinus, which showed the Risen Christ with the disciples at Emmaus, sometimes accompanied by the three Marys and Doubting Thomas. This led by degrees to a drama which extended from the preparations for the Last Supper to the burial of Christ. This was given in a rudimentary form as long as it remained within the church, mostly in dumb show with passages from the Vulgate, but once performed outside, it coalesced and took on more substance to form the all-important and widespread Passion play.

Meanwhile the services of Christmas had given rise to a play on the Nativity, centring on the crib, with Mary, Joseph, the ox and ass, shepherds, and angels. This never attained in liturgical drama the status of the Easter play, and, together with a short scene dealing with Rachel and the Massacre of the Innocents, was soon absorbed into an Epiphany play, in which the interest centred on the Wise Men and their gifts and on the wickedness of Herod who was to be so important in later secular religious plays.

Another Christmas play, and the most important for the future development of the drama, was based on a narrative sermon attributed to St Augustine and known as the Prophet play. It listed all the prophecies from the Old Testament concerning the coming of the Messiah, and included also those of Virgil and the Erythraean Sibyl. At some time in the 11th century it became a metrical dramatic dialogue, introducing Balaam and his Ass and the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace. The ass was probably an importation from the Feast of Fools, and its use may mark a determined effort by the Church to canalize the irrepressible licence of Christmas merrymaking by incorporating into its own more orderly proceedings a slight element of buffoonery.

As long as the play remained within the church it was part of the liturgy, and the actors were priests, choirboys, and perhaps, later on, nuns. The dialogue, entirely in Latin, was chanted, not spoken, and the musical interludes were sung by the choir alone, with no participation by the congregation. By the end of the 13th century the evolution of liturgical drama was complete, and in its final phase it was not necessarily connected with a church service. From it came the vernacular mystery play, and eventually the Church, having given back to Europe a regular and coherent form of drama, withdrew and prepared to do battle with the art form which it had engendered, and whose development henceforward was to become part of the theatrical history of each separate European country.