Everything Takes Off In All Directions At Once

Everything Takes Off In All Directions At Once

The clergy have pretty well given up control of the increasingly secular drama to religious guilds and flagellants (those weird people who like to run around whipping themselves for all the sins that caused the great plague). The clergy are kind enough to also pass along to the guilds and corporations who take over the financing, their great accumulation of scenery, props and costumes that they have collected and used over the last two hundred years. This gives the producing organizations a good stock of visual elements to build on. The guilds and corporations have to have the last word in how the money will be spent and who will be in the cast.

A more realistic style of presentation and of costume (except for things like devils, angels, Adam and Eve and God, of course) begins to be the thing. There is the rise of farcical and grotesque elements as well as topical references and lots of criticism of current affairs cropping up in the plays.

1400 - Remember those military religious orders? Well now they're a lot of theatrical religious orders for the express purpose of producing religious drama. Just like the military they are mainly laymen, but this system gives them the needed link with the church for producing theatre. One of the most important groups, in terms of theatre history, is the Confrerie de la Passion* (Passion fraternity) in Paris*. It is now up and running.

1400 - The ecclesiastical drama flourishes in Italy. *1400's - In England they are using two kinds of spaces for production, the pageant wagons*

and in the round. The round is used particularly in Cornwall. They also do the cycles* differently than the rest of Europe. Instead of using the Corpus Christi* stations, the English do mystery cycles with each text in short one-act form, so all the plays are of equal length. There are multiple settings in the Cornish Plays* (done in Cornwall.) We still have two of these plays, but the most famous is The Castle of Perseverance *. Both the performance spaces used for production (at St. Just in Penwith and at Perranzabuloe) and the play still exist. The playing rounds are 126 and 143 feet in diameter. Plays are also performed in a semi-circle like the Roman theatres.

Another difference between the English and the rest of Europe, is their tendency to end the play cycle with minstrels piping a dance in which the spectators are invited to participate. The European ones all end with music of Te Deum*.

1400's - We find a Tirolean version of a secular May play, a boisterous Shrovetide comedy.

1400's - We begin to get Italian efforts to revive interest in Roman drama. This spreads through the schools, universities, and those theatrical people in the law courts.

c. 1400 - The oldest extant Morality Play* called The Pride of Life* shows up. 1400 That Greek teacher from Byzantium, Manuel Chrysoloras*, really excites the

Florentines and a group of influential businessmen take a package tour to Constantinople. They come back impressed and started to look for their own classical Roman past, lying around in broken pieces all over. Petrarch* had said it decades before, that they soon would

be able to walk back to their glorious past. Now they want to. The first steps toward Humanism are being taken. The Florentines really go for this classical civic glorification of the community-conscious individual. That suits them to a tee. More important in the near future, they come back from their trip with a copy of the absolute best in ancient map making information, a copy of Ptolemy's* Geographica.

The earliest known literature in the Cornish language shows up here. 1401 Timur* conquers Damascus* and Bagdad* 1402 Timur* defeats the Turkish Caliph at Ankara and takes him prisoner. 1402 - In France the Confrerie de la Passion* gets the monopoly for doing shows in Paris. 1403 Suleiman I* takes over as head of as much of the Eastern Islamic Empire as Timur* has

left him. 1405 Timur* dies. 1408 The Italian sculptor, Donatello*, turns out his statues of "David" and "St. John." 1410 The final end comes to the Teutonic Knights* when they are annihilated by the Polish

and Lithuanian army. Their home of Marrienburg remains intact as does most of their territory. But, as a military order, they are finished.

1411 - The Confrerie de la Passion* moves its operations indoors (in case you wondered if everybody did their thing out in the weather, the answer is mostly, but not always.) They are now housed in the Hospital de la Trinite*.

1412 What with all scientific mathematical and optical knowledge coming in from Spain, and the passionate interest in Roman ruins (to figure out how they did what they did with architecture), things are beginning to happen. A happy by-product is the association of an educated merchant named Toscanelli* with a practical architect, Brunelleschi*. After a successful dome-building job they collaborate on, Brunelleschi* gets interested in this perspective* stuff Toscanelli* told him about, and puts it to practical use with the first-ever perspective painting. Boy! will this ever be a boon to the Renaissance theatre! But more of that later. He publishes all about it in his "Rules of Perspective."

1413 In England Henry IV* dies and Henry V* comes to the throne.

A note about that Brunelleschi* architect. He also works out the technical apparatus for performances in, and in front of, churches in Florence. He is responsible for convincing the Florentines to regard their religious theatre as works of art.

1413 - Secular: In Germany they are doing crude, robust (that usually means sexy) plays called Klucht*, put on by "fool's companies." Then there are the Sotternieen*, which are lighthearted afterpeices (that means between courses of dinner, or after dinner.)

1413 - The Low Countries begin having competitions among the Chambers of Rhetoric*. A question is posed and the various chambers compose and produce answers in the form of allegorical drama. There is a prize for the best. This becomes the major dramatic expression of the Low Countries. They are performed both outdoors and indoors. They come up with a special kind of stage that looks a lot like it could lead to the later Elizabethan stage.

415 Henry V* defeats the French at Agincourt*. Jan Hus* is burned at the stake for heresy. The King of Portugal starts trying to find an alternate route to the Spice Islands (Way off in

the East, off the Malay peninsula.) 1419 Remember those Jews who retired to an island to study navigation? Well, Prince Henry*

(later known as the "navigator") of Portugal is using their work and sets up a school of navigation at Sagres, Cape St. Vincent, the westernmost spot in Europe. He wants to do a little Christianizing in Africa, and a lot of finding a new way to get to the East and those Spice Islands.

1425 Henry*'s (the Portuguese) brother, Pedro, goes off to Florence (the map center of the universe), and get Toscanelli* (who, besides being a merchant and student of mathematics, is also a doctor and a cartographer) to put together all the information he can on maps. So Toscanelli* does, including all that great stuff they learned from Ptolemy about making a grid so you can tell where things are (as opposed to the medieval way of just making a cute decorative picture.)

1425 - The English morality* play reaches its zenith in The Castle of Preseverance*. We know more about this play than almost any other thanks to an exhaustive investigation by Richard Southern (reported in his book The Medieval Theatre in the Round (1957). This way of doing shows in the round doesn't seem to have caught on over on the continent.

1426 Holland becomes the center of European music. 1426 - In Navarre, students of Paris College de Navarre make a morality play out of a sermon. 1428 That strange little French peasant girl, Joan of Arc*, leads the French army against the

English. 1429 Joan of Arc* raises the siege at Orleans and makes possible the crowning of Charles

VII* at Rheims. In England Henry VI* is crowned.

1430 - 1515 - The free Hansa city of Lubeck has "Lubeck clubs" which organizs performances of little comedies and then performs them on wagons. It looks like everybody is getting into the theatrical business.

1430 Joan of Arc* is captured by the Burgundians and handed over to the church inquisition for trial. Meanwhile in England the language is changing from Middle English towards Modern English.

The great cast iron gun ("Mad Marjorie") is introduced. 1431 Joan of Arc* is found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at Rouen. 1431 - At the court of Philip the Good of Burgundy, Georges Chastellian* writes a play with

allegorical figures as the active protagonists. It is entitled Le Concilede Bale*. 1432 - The Pageant Wagons* are widely used for other events besides plays. The civil

pageants, like the one welcoming young Henry VI* to the city of London is a case in point (in the Renaissance these will be called Trionfi.) This one is allegorical and performed at six key places in the city as the procession moves through London. The allegories deal with the responsibilities of governing and the qualities needed in a king.

1433 Symbols are important and this is the year the double-eagle is adopted as the emblem of the Holy Roman Emperors*.

1434 Those Portuguese explorers are working their way down the African coast and Joao Diaz rounds Cape Bojador.fs

1435 A Swedish Parliament meets for the first time. Democracy is looking up. 1439 - Down in Florence, Italy, they do a show honoring John the Baptist* with 22 settings

on moveable scaffolds. 1439 - Some of the morality* plays become really elaborate. A case in point is Bien advise

mal advise* (Bad advice, Good Advice) performed at Rennes. It is 8,000 lines long with a cast of sixty. The well known Wheel of Fortune* is part of the elaborate scenery. In this little gem the "well-advised" get carried up to heaven by angels.

1439 The Pope calls a big meeting to see what the west can do to help Byzantium* where the terrible Turks are on the doorstep. Florence is willing to foot the bill, especially that merchant Toscanelli*, since the spice trade would go down the tube if the Turks take Constantinople*

.1441 Portuguese navigators (thanks in part to all that map help they're getting from Toscanelli*) exploring the west coast of Africa find the African Gold Coast. It has all those lovely precious metals and blacks. Now, what with the labor shortage back home, they start up the slave trade again.

1442 - The social farce is developing in the efforts of jurists, scribes, students, civic organizations, wandering scholars, merchants and craftsmen. The composition and production of farces is especially evident in the law-clerks associations (Basoches*) with performances called Basoches* du Palais.

The nice thing about farce is that it makes no technical demands and can be done anywhere. They do use costumes and masks. Both the farce and the sottie* have heroes that are commoners and courtiers in fool's dress. The sottie* is closely connected with Paris groups like the Enfants sans souci* and similar groups throughout France.

1445 Those Portuguese explorers are still working their way down the African coast and Diniz Diaz discovers Cape Verde.

1449 on - The apprentices of Nuremberg's guilds organize the Schenbartlauf*, Shrovetide comedies and other merriments. In the Tirolean south the location of these Schenbartlauf* is set in King Arthur's court. These theatrical events put on by various boy's groups remain a popular entertainment for another hundred years.

1450 Florence under the Medici* becomes the center of humanism and Renaissance. 1450 or so - Burlesques* and peasant plays* are becoming popular throughout Europe. For

example: the Conrega dei Rozzi* group in Sienna (Italy) is so successful with its Peasant Plays* that they are invited to play in Rome and at the Vatican.

1450 - All over the Low Countries, especially in Flanders, they're using those wagons too (called Wagon spel*). They have also got a craftsmen's acting association up and running (Gesetten ronde Spele*.)

1452 Metal plates are used for printing. 1453-1455 Gutenberg* and his financier, Johannes Fust* print the first 42 line Bible at

Mainz* and keeps on printing books like crazy. 1453 The Hundred Years War* ends with the English giving up territory. Constantinople*

falls to the Turks and we end the Middle Ages. 1485 - 1510 - Germany is busy doing all kinds of different plays. They come up with the first

known play-within-a-play about a female Faust-type who gets into a bargain with the devil but is forgiven in the end. Marieken vaon Nieumeghen* is the title of this anonymous gem.

1486 through 1528 - cover the period in which Albrecht Durer* did his incredible woodcuts in Nuremberg, Germany. Although he is later than this period, his works illustrate the medieval characters and subject matter just as it would be seen in the plays. He also worked on illustrations of the spectacular Triumph of Maximillian* I (along with a lot of other artists). Illustrations of the entire triumph is published in 1512. It shows us a great deal about the elaborateness of all varieties of wagons used all over Europe for Pageants, Processions and Festivals as well as Triumphs*.

*1495 or 1509 - We have no idea who wrote the best known morality play Everyman *. But, it is still frequently done and always popular. Despite its late date, it really belongs in the Middle Ages.