The origins of the English theatre

The first plays, closely linked to the main Christian celebrations, took place in churches.

When they moved in other places Latin was replaced with English and they were no more played by the clergy but by normal people: this was the birth of the English theatre, between the 13^th and the 15^th centuries.

The subjects of these performances, called Miracle Plays, were Biblical histories played on movable stage wagons moving in the city, called pageants, which usually stopped in the principal places like the market place or the town hall. There were several pageants at the same time in the city, and each one was a section of the complete story: so people used to move from one pageant to another.

Miracle Plays evolved into the Morality Plays, whose characters weren’t taken from the Bible but they were personification of human vices and virtues.

At the end of the 15^th century were acted, usually by a small acting company at a lord’s house, short plays called Interludes that combined serious and comic elements. Their main technical expedients were the disguise and the vice.

Simone Giuntini