Attic (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI ENGLISH ORIGINS Like the Greek stage, the roots of the English Tragic Drama stretch away back to the religious festival. The origins of the Elizabethan Tragedy, the unparalleled manifestations of the stupendous genius of Shakespeare, lay far up along the head-streams of English religious and social history, in the efforts of the monks to teach a people ignorant of letters the mysteries of the revealed faith and the miracles of the saints. The Miracle Play, the Mystery, and the Morality were the three steps of the evolution which issued in the Elizabethan Drama.1 The secret, indeed, of the marvellously rapid culmination of that Drama in the perfection of William Shakespeare, is the fact that, from the eleventh century, dramatic representation, of no matter how rude a kind had been the most widespread and popular form of entertainment at the holiday festivals of the people. Chaucer's "Wife of Bath" tells us how fond she was of entertainments and gatherings; and includes amongst these, vigils, pilgrimages, and miracle plays. Absolon, also, the Parish Clerk in the " Traveller's Tale," is a capable performer in the Miracle Play, and a master of the part of Herod. It is evident from Chaucer's page that, in his day, the Miracle Play was popular all over the country, that it was enacted on a platform in full view of the people, and that the Church retained the patronage of it. The mediumMIRACLES