Question

Write a detail note on the account of the beginning of English drama, up to Marlowe.

Answer 1

Explanation:

The English Drama before Marlowe

The Origin and Liturgical Plays:

Briefly stated, the drama in England developed from the liturgical play to the miracle play to morality, from the morality play to the interlude, and from that to the "regular' drama of the Elizabethan age. The story of this development is, however, not so simple as it may wrongly appear. There are overlappings, aberrations, and missing links.

As in Greece and many other countries, the drama in England had a religious origin. It sprang from church service as the ancient Greek tragedy had sprung out of the ceremonial worship of Dionysus. As a critic well puts it, the "attitude of religion and drama towards each other has been strikingly varied. Sometimes it has been one of intimate alliance, sometimes of active hostility, but never of indifference." In England the church was, in the beginning, actively hostile to drama and all along during the Dark Ages (the 6th century to the 10th) there is missing any record of dramatic activity. Only in the ninth century there were tropes or additional texts to ecclesiastical music. These tropes sometimes assumed a dialogue form. They were, like church service, couched in Latin. They were later detached from the regular service and presented by themselves on religious festivals such as"Easter and Christmas. By and by they took the form of "liturgical plays" after becoming somewhat more complex. They were dramatisations of the major events of Christ's life, such as the Birth and the Resurrection, and were enacted by priests right in the church. These plays enjoyed a vast popularity. Thus, as Sir Ifor Evans observes, "while at the beginning of the Dark Ages the church attempted to suppress the drama, at the beginning of the Middle Ages something very much like the drama was instituted in the church itself."

The Miracle and Mystery Plays:

The next stage of development comes with miracle and mystery plays. The early liturgical drama assumed the more developed form of the miracle and mystery plays sometime in the fourteenth century, though, of course, there is evidence that the first representation of a miracle play took place in Dunstable as early as 1119. In England the "miracle plays" and "mystery plays" are often considered svnonvmous. but technicallv there is a difference between the two. The miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints (non-scriptural matter), whereas the mystery plays handled incidents from the Bible (scriptural themes). The miracle and mystery plays differ from the early liturgical drama in their slightly more developed sense of drama and better dialogue. They were both written and enacted by ecclesiastics and had for their obvious object the instruction of the people in scripture history. They treated of such themes from the Bible as the Creation, the Flood, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of the Saviour. But they had an element of entertainment too. in the form of crude grotesqueries which may appear to the modern reader as outright profanities.

With

Answer 2

Explanation:

Tragedy before Marlow: Swinburne’s remarks, “Before him there was neither genuine blank verse nor a genuine tragedy in our language. After his arrival the way was paved for Shakespeare.” With the advent of Marlowe, Miracle and Morality plays vanished. He brought Drama out of the old rut of street presentation and made it a perfect art and a thing of beauty. After the Reformation, the Mystery and Morality plays were disliked by the public at large until the advent of University Wits the greatest of whom was Marlowe.

It was in the fifteenth century that tragedy came to English dramatic field. This was due to the Revival of Learning in Europe commonly referred to as the Renaissance and the translation of great Italian tragedies. Italian Renaissance exercised a vital influence on the development of English Drama. The first English tragedy was Gorboduc (1565) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville. In style and treatment of theme Seneca was very much their model. Although this tragedy showed some innovation, yet most of the Senecan qualities such as long speeches, ghosts, gruesome murders and talks and talks were very much there. The tragedies that followed Seneca had the same qualities and properties. It required the mighty efforts of a genius to free the Elizabethan Drama from the worst features of the Senecan tragedies and it was Christopher Marlowe who has achieved this foundation for the realm of English Dramatic Literature. There are umpteen characteristic of Marlovian tragedies. In discussing Marlowe, we can point out how he formulated the English Drama and especially Tragedy which was improved upon and perfected by a genius like Shakespeare who owes Marlowe for all his greatness and grandeur. Because had there been no Marlowe, there would have been no Shakespeare. It is also due to Marlowe that English Drama for the first time was bestirred with the vigorous poetry and passion. He has rightly been called the Morning Star of English Drama.

NaeemMarlow’s Great Tragic Heroes: The first great thing done by Marlowe was to break away from the medieval conception of Tragedy. The Medieval Drama was a game of the princes and imperial classes – the kings and Queens and their rise an fall. But it was left to Marlowe to evolve and create the real tragic hero. All of his tragic heroes are of humble parentage, Tamburlaine, Barabas in the Jew of Malta and Faustus, but they are endowed with great tragic and heroic qualities. His tragedy is a tragedy of one man – his rise and fall, his fate and actions and finally his death for his own failings and incapacities. All the other characters fade into insignificance besides the towering personality and the glory and grandeur of the tragic hero. Even various incidents revolve round the hero. His heroes are men fired with indomitable passion and inordinate ambition. His Tamburlaine is in full-flooded pursuit of military and political power, his Faustus sells his soul to the Devil to attain ultimate power through knowledge and gain the deity and His Jew of Malta discards all sense of human values with his blind aspirations. What Marlowe depicts and dramatizes is that all his mighty and towering heroes with all their sky-high designs and aspirations ultimately fall into failure and doom exhibiting their tragic and doomed end. Herein lies the greatness of Marlowe.

Working of a passion: We have previously studied that Marlowe’s heroes are dominated by the inordinate desires and passions. These passions take the form of wealth, spirit of learning, high power. Through these, Marlowe imparts vehemence, fire and force in the drama. But in this way, we may trace the distinct influence of Machiavelli on Marlowe. Marlowe must have read his famous book, The Prince and derived this idea of ambition and spirit from him. Marlowe discarded the old concept of tragedy as decent from greatness to misery and supplanted it greatness by the greatness of individual worth. His heroes truly reflect the new Spirit of Learning because he himself was the product of Renaissance.

hope its helps u;;;_;;;; yo!!!!!

AV