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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary theory
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Drama, Play, and Game (Hardcover, 2nd ed.)
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Drama, Play, and Game (Hardcover, 2nd ed.)
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How was it possible for drama, especially biblical representations,
to appear in the Christian West given the church's condemnation of
the "theatrum" of the ancient world? In a book with radical
implications for the study of medieval literature, Lawrence Clopper
resolves this perplexing question.
"Drama, Play, and Game" demonstrates that the "theatrum" repudiated
by medieval clerics was not "theater" as we understand the term
today. Clopper contends that critics have misrepresented Western
stage history because they have assumed that "theatrum" designates
a place where drama is performed. While "theatrum" was thought of
as a site of spectacle during the Middle Ages, the term was more
closely connected with immodest behavior and lurid forms of festive
culture. Clerics were not opposed to liturgical representations in
churches, but they strove ardently to suppress May games," ludi,"
festivals, and liturgical parodies. Medieval drama, then, stemmed
from a more vernacular tradition than previously acknowledged-one
developed by England's laity outside the boundaries of clerical
rule.
"Drama, Play, and Game" also explores the antitheatrical milieu in
which this tradition developed. Clopper reads the" Tretise of
Miraclis Pleyinge"-thought to be the only sustained attack on
theater between late antiquity and the Puritan period-as an assault
not on religious drama but on various forms of "ludi inhonesti," He
then argues that "ludi" varied widely in England depending on the
participants' clerical or lay status and on where the "ludi" were
performed. Clopper provides profiles of ludic practices in a
variety of venues: monasteries and churches, aristocratic houses,
cities and towns, parishes, and the countryside.
Moving from consideration of why dramas developed in some cities
and towns and not others, Clopper considers finally the "matter" of
surviving plays-the kind of information that gets into them and the
anxieties they display-and questions whose interests the plays
represented. He argues ultimately that clerical indifference and
growing distaste for vernacular drama engendered a reaction from
lay people who institutionalized themselves in guilds to assert
their own political power, flaunt the prestige of urban life, and
take advantage of new commercial opportunities.
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