The drama
was the form into which were moulded the thoughts and desires of the
best spirits of the time. It was the flower of the age. To appreciate
its many-sided significances and achievements it is necessary to
disentangle carefully its roots, in religion, in the revival of the
classics, in popular entertainments, in imports from abroad, in the air
of enterprise and adventure which belonged to the time.
As in Greece, drama in England was in its beginning a religious thing.
Its oldest continuous tradition was from the mediaeval Church. Early in
the Middle Ages the clergy and their parishioners began the habit, at
Christmas, Easter and other holy days, of playing some part of the story
of Christ's life suitable to the festival of the day. These plays were
liturgical, and originally, no doubt, overshadowed by a choral element.
But gradually the inherent human capacity for mimicry and drama took the
upper hand; from ceremonies they developed into performances; they
passed from the stage in the church porch to the stage in the street. A
waggon, the natural human platform for mimicry or oratory, became in
England as it was in Greece, the cradle of the drama. This momentous
change in the history of the miracle play, which made it in all but its
occasion and its subject a secular thing, took place about the end of
the twelfth century.
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