Once the theatre had been moved outside the church, production of the plays was gradually taken over by the laity, and performances were given entirely in the vernacular. (Some liturgical dramas, however, continued to be presented inside the church until the 16th century.) The number of short plays proliferated until they were organized into great cycles covering the whole biblical story from the creation to the Last Judgment, though centring on the Passion and designed to express the humanity as well as the divinity of Christ. In France they became known as mystères (from Latin ministerium, “service”), in Italy as sacre rappresentazioni, in Spain as autos sacramentales, in Germany as Mysterienspielen, and in England as mystery plays (later mystery cycles). Comprising up to 50 short plays, these cycles were sometimes performed over two or three days. In England the cycles of York, Wakefield, Coventry, and Chester survive, as does a cycle called the N-Town plays, but on the Continent there are many more. As the presentation of these plays grew more elaborate, they became a civic affair, and special organizations took over their staging; e.g., in France it was the confréries, while in England it was the trade guilds. Each guild would take responsibility for a particular play, usually related to its work: the building of Noah’s ark, for example, would be staged by the shipwrights. Church vestments were replaced by appropriate contemporary costumes, and, because many of the plays called for complex and realistic effects—e.g., scenes of torture and execution or appearances from Hell’s mouth—sophisticated properties and machinery were devised to achieve them.

Initially, in the 12th century, the cycles were presented on a series of decorated platforms known as houses or mansions, following the type of layout established in the liturgical drama, with each representing a particular location. These mansions were usually arranged in a straight line or a semicircle with the audience in front. In Italy stages were placed around a city square with the spectators in the centre. An alternative presentation, used in England from the 14th century (and later in Spain), was processional staging on pageant wagons. This is thought to have grown out of the elaborate Corpus Christi processions (from 1311), in which decorated carts displaying religious tableaux were used. The tradition of tournaments and the pageantry set up for royal entries also had an influence. Each play was mounted on a “pageant,” or cart, often built and decorated to suggest the scene depicted. These mobile stages were paraded around the town, stopping at various stations where the actors repeated their performance in front of a group of spectators, who then waited for the next cart to appear.

Both audience and players were united by a common faith strong enough for the actors to rehearse months in advance and for the spectators to stand all day watching the plays. Still, the factor of entertainment became increasingly important, as this was secular theatre, the religious theme notwithstanding. It was the comic characters, especially the devils and buffoons, who were most popular, and it was here that there may have been an element of professionalism, with the minstrels and jongleurs adding their own skills and brand of humour. Furthermore, once the mystery cycles had abandoned the uniformity of Latin, national differences became accentuated when local customs, idioms, and folk traditions were incorporated into the plays. In England the juxtaposition of solemnity and humour helped to flavour the spirit of the great Elizabethan theatre that was to follow.

Morality plays

After the earthy humour and simple devotion of the mystery cycles, the morality plays that appeared during the 15th century show theatre taking what at first seems to be a step backward. These plays, however, reflect the darker worldview of a people that had experienced recurrent plagues and had begun to regard human destiny as “worm’s meat,” where the skeleton figure of death was a potent emblem constantly alluded to in sermons. Morality plays were virtually sermons dramatized through allegory. They portrayed the span of human life in abstract terms, with Mankind or Humanum Genus setting out on a pilgrimage in which he encountered a whole range of vices and virtues such as Ignorance, Humility, and the Seven Deadly Sins, all of which contended for possession of his soul. The principal themes were the choice between good and evil, the transitory nature of life, and the immediacy of death, reflecting a medieval preoccupation with the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. Such concerns were particularly relevant at a time when trade and finance were rapidly expanding, offering merchants the prospect of great personal wealth and a life of material luxury.

Morality plays probably originated in England, the earliest known text being The Castell of Perseverance (c. 1405–25). However, one of the best of the genre, Everyman, began in the Netherlands, and moralities were frequently performed in France. Performances initially took place in churches, then on simple outdoor stages, though without the visual extravagance that the mystery cycles demanded. Although the plots were stereotyped and the abstract characters allowed little scope for development, morality plays achieved considerable sophistication—they were intended for an educated, middle-class audience—and moved a long way toward secularization, thus forming a significant link between the medieval and the modern theatres. Nevertheless, in the 16th century, at the height of their aesthetic achievement, morality plays were suppressed in England, primarily because religious drama was beginning to become an instrument of politico-religious propaganda under successive Roman Catholic and Protestant governments.

Interludes

As a development of the morality play that drew on the legacy of the minstrel, interludes (from Latin interludium) were performed in Europe by small companies of professional actors during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term covers a wide range of entertainment, from simple farces performed on small stages in public places to dramatic sketches performed at banquets in the halls of the nobility. In both cases the plays were purely secular and more concerned with ideas than with morals. They were called Fastnachtsspiele in Germany and kluchtspelen in the Netherlands; they were also performed in Italy and Spain, but most interludes came from France, where they were known as soties, and from England. These pieces usually dealt with the antics of foolish or cunning peasants, exploring the relationship between master and servant or husband and wife. In England the move toward professionalism was accelerated by a law that subjected “all players of farces, minstrels and other entertainers” to be whipped if they did not have the patronage of a member of the nobility.