Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They told of subjects such as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment. Often they were performed together in cycles which could last for days.

Morality plays stemmed from Mystery and Miracle plays. It is the last in the trilogy of Vernacular drama. Typically, Morality plays tried to teach through a theatrical point of view. These plays were allegorical dramas that personified the moral values and abstract ideas to teach moral lessons.

There were three different types of plays preformed during medieval times; The Mystery Play, the Miracle Play and the Morality Play. Mystery plays were stories taken from the Bible.

Mystery plays told stories from the Bible and gave way to large mystery cycles in which many stories were told sequentially on the same day. And finally, miracle plays told the stories of the saint’s lives, sometimes true and sometimes fictional.

The Passion play is the chief modern example of the miracle play. The French mystre distinguished those plays containing biblical stories from those about the lives of the saints.

Why were Miracle Plays eventually banned in England? Because of their Roman Catholic Teachings. What is the best-known Morality Play? Who is the main character in every Morality Play?

York plays, a cycle of 48 plays, dating from the 14th century, of unknown authorship, which were performed during the Middle Ages by craft guilds in the city of York, in the north of England, on the summer feast day of Corpus Christi.

Answer. Explanation: Medieval drama took many forms, but the most spectacular of all was the religious drama of towns such as York, Chester, Coventry and Wakefield, known as the ‘mystery plays. ‘

Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum (English: “Order of the Virtues”) composed c. 1151, is the earliest known morality play by more than a century, and the only Medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both the text and the music.

The essential theme of the morality play is the conflict between the forces of good (the good angel, the virtues) and the forces of evil (the bad angel or devil, the vices) for possession of man’s soul.

Dr Faustus is a morality play but with Rennaissance period undertones. Faustus is a Renaissance tragedy written by the Cambridge scholar Christopher Marlowe.  The full title of the play is “The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus”.

Faustus is a typical Renaissance man in that he rejects putting restrictions on his quest for knowledge. He has a great desire to gain knowledge, even in forbidden areas. Knowledge is his route to power. He is also a Renaissance man, rather than an Enlightenment man, in that he has not lost faith in the supernatural.

Marlowe deeply influenced the theatre of the Renaissance literary period with his blank verse. He wrote with great intensity, and villain-heroes, which was a new type for the English stage. Also Shakespeare favored the blank verse.

What does “Renaissance” mean? Renaissance is a French word meaning “rebirth.” It refers to a period in European civilization that was marked by a revival of Classical learning and wisdom.

Characteristics of the Renaissance include a renewed interest in classical antiquity; a rise in humanist philosophy (a belief in self, human worth, and individual dignity); and radical changes in ideas about religion, politics, and science.

Historians have identified several causes for the emergence of the Renaissance following the Middle Ages, such as: increased interaction between different cultures, the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, the emergence of humanism, different artistic and technological innovations, and the impacts of conflict …

The Renaissance led to significant results. It brought about a transition from the medieval to the modern age. This period witnessed the end of the old and reactionary medieval spirit, and the beginning of the new spirit of science, reason and experimentation. The hands of the monarchy were strengthened.

The Black Death marked an end of an era in Italy, its impact was profound and it resulted in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and religious changes. These changes, directly and indirectly, led to the emergence of the Renaissance, one of the greatest epochs for art, architecture, and literature in human history.

The literary meaning of the term renaissance is rebirth. The period brought about the revival of interest in Greek and Roman literature and art. The people of the times wanted to revive the culture by adding their own ideas. They felt that ancient Greek and Roman traditions were rich in cultural heritage.

Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.

Charles Homer Haskins wrote in “The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century” that there were three main periods that saw resurgences in the art and philosophy of antiquity: the Carolingian Renaissance, which occurred during the reign of Charlemagne, the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (eighth and ninth centuries).