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Religious Influence on the Theatre throughout History Religion has always made its influence on the theatre throughout history because theatre was born through religion. We are going to explore the birth of theatre thousands years ago, its evolution and how it was influenced by different religions. We will start from the ritual dances and totem beliefs, then proceed with ancient Egypt and India, visit the ancient Greece and Roman Empire, explore the medieval times theatre and finally will come to the 17 -th century England and France. All through the centuries, we will observe how the theatre was influenced by religion in all its forms.
In fact, the earliest plays can be found in the ritual dances of our ancestors on the dawn of human evolution. The rituals were the form of the first religion through which the first people prayed to their Gods or totem animals for a good harvest or luck during hunting. They made shows in which some people were audience and some were actors. The fire was the center representing the first stage.
The tribe members danced around it and sang their words that were their dialogues in this organized play. Shaman or some person in charge of ritual aspects was a key figure in those activities. He preserved the words or dialogues and taught everything he knew to his children or to the next shaman. He was also the producer of the drama spreading different roles among the participants and playing himself the key part in the play. For example, some members of the tribe were hunters and he was the animal they planned to kill.
In a very artistic way the hunters disguised in masks and painted themselves in different colors with a particular meaning (for example, dances before hunting demanded one set of colors and dances before war demanded other colors). The shaman disguised as an animal putting horns on his head or the animals skin on his body. Then the actors played the drama in which eventually they killed the animal (they did not kill shaman, he just pretended to be killed). This symbolized successful result during hunting. As in those times people believed in totems (animal that brings a good luck to the tribe or to a particular member of the tribe) they never killed the totem animal. However, they preyed even to the animals they killed, first asking their permission to kill them and then asking to forgive them for their killing.
This was the first religion with its prayers, although far from Christianity or other modern or old day religions, but still having many features in common. One more example of the religious influence on the theatre can be found in Ancient Egypt. Egyptians were very religious people. They believed that there is life after death, and in that world of dead there were many powerful Gods who fought with each other. The murder of Osiris, the king of all Gods and the re-establishment of his cult were the main subjects in the dramas performed at the court of real, non-God Egyptian kings pharaohs. The dramas of that time were quite realistic because some actors even died after performance from many real wounds that they got during the play.
The battle between the enemies of God Osiris and the forces led by his son had to be blood shedding and it was so. The victory of the followers of Osiris proclaimed his resurrection and eternal kingdom of faith. In this way, religion manifested its influence on the theatre as early as around year 2000 B. C. India is a very ancient country. The Sanskrit and Prairie were the ancestor languages of all modern European languages.
The Indian religious texts of Veda and Mahabharata are known for their elaborate religious content and the world wisdom. They are also a unique example of literature. In addition, these religious texts were the source for the Hindu drama plays. The reciting of religious texts was very important because priests tried to preserve the ancient language and the texts of prayers. The gifted bards were reciting those texts at the various places of worship. Those recitals were attended not only by common people but also by royalty.
In the rainy season, the lecturer's place was at the reading desk in the city temples, but during the fine months of the year, the evening entertainment was given on the village green. The reading of the Mahabharata would last several weeks, being continued night after night. The Mahabharata and Ramayana supplied no end of subjects, even as the Bible was the inexhaustible source of the mysteries and miracle plays in medieval Europe. Large crowds came to witness these open-air spectacles.
Shiva and Krishna were two main Gods and either of them could win in the end of the performance. As we see, religion made a great influence on the drama of ancient India. Religion provided the context for almost all communal activity throughout the history of ancient Greece. The Greek Gods with Zeus at their head are well known all around the world. The mount Olympus where all those Gods were believed to dwell became the symbol of Olympic Games held to the honor of Gods.
Religious context was in Greek literature and myths, in sports, in wars and in their political life. Later the famous playwrights and dramatists such as Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes and others used religion, relations between common people, heroes, Gods and Fate as the themes for their plays. Every year they competed in the dramatic contests held in the honor of Greek God Dionysus. According to one legend, Aeschylus, who is considered to be the father of Greek drama, was visited one night by Gods who commanded him to write tragic dramas for their glorification in the religious festivals. Although the Greek dramatists paid so much attention to Gods, sometimes they were accused of impiety. This thing happened to Aeschylus.
It was alleged that in one of his plays he had revealed the Eleusinian mysteries, and this was probably in the Eumenides, which is full of references to religious subjects. It is even said that his life was threatened while on the stage and that he only saved himself by taking refuge at the altar of Dionysus. Not even Socrates was more unjustly accused of impiety than was the great tragedian whose works are filled with the grandest conceptions of divine power and fate through the interferences of Olympian Gods, with Zeus directing all things to a happy end. Throughout his dramas is shown the deepest respect to the Gods, the highest regard for the sanctity of an oath and a firm belief in the immortality of the soul. Euripides, who is also a renowned Greek dramatist, showed many religious aspects in his plays. One of his extant plays, in which we can see the influence of fate and Gods on earthly people, is Hippolytus (this play took the first prize in the dramatic contest in 428 B.
C. ). In the prologue, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess declares herself resolved to punish Hippolytus, son of Theseus, who has no respect to her and pays his worship to Artemis. With this design she has put into the heart of Phaedra, the wife of Theseus, a love for her stepson. This Theseus will learn, and then will destroy his son by one of three fatal wishes that Poseidon has promised to fulfill.
This will involve the ruin of Phaedra too. As we see, the plot is full of Gods who can do whatever they want with common people. However, there is the thing that is even more powerful than Gods Fate. Fate can prevent the Gods from making bad deeds or condemn earthly people to death and destruction. There was never such a time when religion played so important role in the theatre as in ancient Greece.
The Greek heritage was accepted gladly in ancient Rome. But the Roman Empire brought a decline to a classical Greek drama. The audience was less educated and paid less attention to moral and religious aspects of the play. Therefore, Roman playwrights had to follow general trends and produce plays of less quality. In fact, the Roman citizens who saw slaves and victorious warriors returning from conquered lands liked blood-shedding arena of amphitheatre more than the stage of a classical theatre. The Christian Church was born at the times of the Roman Empire and it has always showed the deepest protest against drama and theatre.
The whole authority of the Christian Church had involved all its manifestations in a consistent condemnation, comprehended them all in an uncompromising anathema. When the faith of that Church was acknowledged as the religion of the Roman Empire, the doom of the theatre was sealed. It died hard, however, both in the capitals and in many of the provincial centers of the East and West alike. The clergy made all possible to extinguish theatre from being: it condemned those who visited theatres instead of church, it forbade its clergyman to go to the theatre. In short, the theatre saw its decline both with the decline of the Roman Empire. From that time, Christian Church became a very important factor that influenced the theatre throughout medieval times.
Medieval times saw a revival of drama, and, ironically, it was the Christian Church that brought theatre to life again. The remarkable fact that the revival of the drama in modern Europe was due to the Christian Church has been abundantly proved and illustrated. At first, certain parts of the church ritual were expanded in action, and especially at the great religious festivals of Christmas and Easter attempts were made to exhibit vividly before the faithful what the service was intended to commemorate. The Wise Men from the East, who had been guided by a miraculous star, worshipped and presented their gifts before the cradle of the Divine babe; the Virgin Mother was represented by a girl with a child in her arms; the Resurrection was suggested by a priest rising from a mimic sepulcher. Later the action was extended, and dialogues were added. These were, of course, in Latin, the universal language of the Church.
Gradually scenes from other Scripture stories were combined with those strictly belonging to the service. These church dramas may have been inartistic, but they were characterized by strict simplicity and earnest devotion. After a time, these or similar miracle plays were performed outside of the churches, in the streets of towns or in the fields, at fairs or places of public resort. The actors were priests or monks, and the performance was still religious, including the legends of the saints, as well as Scripture histories. Later Latin was replaced by French verse and the new form religious drama was born the mystery play or simply mystery. Those performances were acted in the Catholic Cathedrals and the Mystery of Passion is the most famous of all the mysteries.
At the meantime, the street performances became very popular. The guilds and companies organized for the special purpose to perform the plays based on Mysteries and Miracles from the Bible were the form of a newborn theatre. This theatre of course used all the religious subjects but it was frivolous enough to depict a devil in a very comic way, angels singing as a chorus. Farce was introduced into the most serious scenes.
Soon the first theatres came into being in Paris. The company that called themselves Brethren of Passion built the first playhouse although at first banned by authorities but then approved by Charles VI. Here the Brethren took up their quarters; and here, in a large salon, duly fitted up, they appeared in the Mystery of the Passion and other sacred dramas on Sundays and during certain festivals of the Church. Thus was established the first of Parisian theatres, its performances serving as the models on which similar entertainments were afterward given throughout the country.
As we can see, religion was the main subject in those dramas and the Christian Church played the decisive role. There is almost no question in that the religious mysteries came to England from France. Throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries there was a constant supply of mysteries and miracles. More than one hundred English towns, some of them very small, are known to have been provided with these entertainments, which in some places were given every year.
All the mysteries or miracles, how they were called in England, used religion as the main subject for the plot. However, with time the artistic quality of such shows became very low. The tradition of performing Passion of Christ, miracles and such-like plays became very popular with English people and was performed even in the family circle on Christmas time. The conclusion we make is that religious influence on the theatre can be traced all through the centuries starting from its birth in the ritual dances of our ancestors. This influence was not of homogeneous nature, at one time, it had one form, as during classical drama, and at the other time, it was just a low quality farce, as in the times of the Roman Empire. No matter how different it was in different times, the religious influence is quite a phenomenon that needs to be counted when studying the process of the theatres development.
Bibliography A Short History of the Drama. Martha Fletcher Bellinger. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927. pp. 132 - 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume VIII. Anonymous.
Cambridge: University Press, 1910. p. 496. Minute History of the Drama. Alice B. Fort & Herbert S. Kates.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1935. p. 4. The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 7. ed.
Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 2 - 3, 6 - 10. The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 1.
ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 70 - 78.
The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915. pp. 11 - 19.
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