Theatre and drama
In Christianity, theatre remained closely connected to ritual through liturgical drama which issued eventually in the miracle plays (dramatizations setting forth the life, miracles, and/or martyrdom of a saint), the mysteries (cycles of plays in which the story of humanity was set forth from the fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgement), and the moralities (dramatized allegories; early examples are The Castle of Perseverance and The Summoning of Everyman, more usually known simply as Everyman). In Spain, the auto sacramental was an even more direct development from the medieval morality plays, and led to the powerful transformations of the form effected by Calderón (1600–81). He wrote more than seventy autos, which expounded the meaning of faith, but which were devotional as well. In the 20th cent., there have been notable attempts in the theatre to explore Christian faith by dramatists who have strongly held Christian beliefs themselves, notably T. S. Eliot and Charles Williams, and less successfully (because more obviously) Graham Greene.
See also RITUAL and DANCE; for Japan see NO DRAMA; for Shīʾa passion plays see TAʿZIYA.
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