Mysterious Side of the Mystery Plays
In today’s world, we generally use theaters as cultural actions and the places where we
can have fun. But have you ever wonder, how theaters used to be in middle ages? At those
times there were Mystery plays, and those plays’ aim was usually performing religious
actions to teach the audience good and evil and moral issues. Furthermore, these plays were
actually really interesting in terms of stages, audience and production works.
First of all, as a definition of mystery plays, we can say that mystery plays are among
the earliest formally developed plays in medieval ages’ Europe. Medieval ages’ mystery plays
focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches. Mystery Plays originated in the
Middle Ages, because of the the lack of interest from the churchgoers in the typical church
services and their ignorance of the Latin language. This problem affected the elaboration of
certain services in terms of beginning of subtle changes to the services for religious holidays
such as Good Friday and Easter. So that those plays were focusing on the subjects such as,
Creation, the Murder of Abel and Adam and Eve, etc. These mystery plays occupy an
important place in the development of drama in the West culture. These plays are staged by
trade guilds in late medieval England. By performing religious plays, the craft guilds managed
to do two things at once such as advertising themselves as merchant organizations. Also, they
were showing their respect to God. Thanks to these plays they were able to serve god and at
the same time serving mammon. The mystery plays include series of performances which
sometimes referred to cycle plays because they make up a cycle of 48 surviving short playlets.
Throughout the 15th and also into the 16th century which means many years before the
building of the London playhouses, these cycles were the most popular and enduring form of
theatre in Britain. These performances performed annually in the biggest towns and cities of
the country. The performances grouped together and these small groups came the four most
prominent collections of mystery plays which are the York cycle with 48 pageants, the
Towneley plays with 32 pageants, the Chester cycle with 24 pageants, and the Wakefield
plays with 42 pageants. Furthermore, the term of “mystery” is not the same with our usage in
today. It was derived from the Latin word ministerium that means an association of clergy
from different religious groups. It was the term used to describe the guilds. When it comes to
the stages, the guilds built expensive and striking wagons. Those wagon stages can move and
there were many labor-intensive works to make them look like as if it’s a Garden of Eden or
Noah’s Ark. Because of their ability to move, those wagons can tour towns around the city so
that the plays were able to represent any location or any time and these plays were not tied
down by each story, so that while they were performing, they could pose two time periods or
locations together that are not cohesive. Also, they did not limit their performances, despite
the century of the plays, they used lots of technologies, such as trap doors and mechanisms to
create an illusion. As a time, staging the play took approximately 20 minutes.
In addition, the audience was also important as much as stages. The audience and the
stage character were sharing a common experience of life and this sharing of experience
enables the audience to assume a critical stance against the vain and foolish activities of the
stage figure. Also the audience is allowed to feel superior to those stages characterized by the
speaker. The mystery plays’ stage do not arouse this feeling in the audience. Also, as a
