Assignment #4: Our Argument

Our Argument: 

The N-Town plays are important because they have feminist themes that are central in today’s relevant cultural topics about gender equality. There is very little information about the N-Town Plays, but based on what we have discovered, the majority of the N-Town Plays revolve around the character Mary, the mother of Jesus. Comparatively, the other 3 cycle plays (Wakefield, York, Chester) had Mary as a somewhat unimportant and minor character. These cycle plays were anonymously written, and yet in a time where the church controlled the theatre, and society was patriarchal, ¼ of the cycle plays (The N-Town Plays) were focusing on a specific woman. Knowing that these cycle plays were sequences of episodes that dramatize biblical stories, biblical stories which were written and approved by men. We believe that what the N-Town plays are doing is shifting the focus to a woman, that woman being Mary. What we believe this does is defies the norm set by crediting men to being the main central focus of creation and power in religion.

What we are asking others to consider is, why were these playwrights anonymous if they were written in a time where religious stories were welcomed, could this have been because women wrote these plays, or perhaps the author’s didn’t credit themselves because of the themes that their plays were discussing. In knowing that the N-Town plays are the least popular, because of their mystery. What we argue is that perhaps the N-Town Play’s lack of attention speaks volumes in importance of what it is saying about women in religion.

Kate's Blog Entry Week 2

This week, we changed our plans a little bit. We talked with Will about our topic, and we discovered that we were being to specific with our focus. So in lieu of that, we readjusted our proposal a little. From our conversation with Will, we were told that the N-Town plays are the cycle plays that we have the least amount of information on, and therefore to research their dramatic structure would be incredibly difficult, too much so for this project. He suggested that we focus on talking about what exactly is a cycle play, and perhaps comparing the N-Town plays, to other cycle plays from the time, such as the York cycle, which is what I volunteered to research. 

I decided to do a more general search through Google to start instead of going through the library databases, and I found an Encyclopedia Britannica page devoted to York plays, as well as a page from the University of Rochester's website. They were mainly consisting of background information, so they talked about how these plays were always performed during the annual summer feast of Corpus Christi, which was always celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (the day before Good Friday in Christianity), which this year will be celebrated on June 4th. They also stated that the York plays are the only complete play cycle associated with the Feast of Corpus Christi that is extant and was performed at a specific location in England, making it of particular interest and importance. As I continued to read on the University of Rochester site, it continued to talk about how much importance we place on the York plays because they are complete. It suggested that it's possible that leaflets from the original text could be missing because it's handled so much from people who are interested in studying a complete example of a cycle play. I thought that idea was interesting because it's kind of oxymoronic; if a leaflet is missing, then it isn't technically complete, but the leaflet is missing because people kept handling it because it was the only one that was complete. I'm talking in circles, but I really appreciated oxymoron present. 

Generally, this week has been mainly about gathering research on our new topic and playing catch-up with where the rest of the class is at this point in the process. We're coming in on Tuesday with our research about each of the known cycle plays and sharing our findings so that we can move on from there. 

Kate Vargulich Week One Blog Entry

In the first week, what I started to focus on was getting a good grasp on our topic as a whole. After our topic was picked, I realized that I knew next to nothing about Medieval Church Drama, so the next step was to research, but after diving into this time period, I realized very quickly that there was too much to know, and I couldn't possibly have a firm grasp on this time period as a whole. So the solution to this dilemma was to try to find events or ideas that I found interesting, and then as a group we could decide what we wanted to focus on (assuming that all of my group mates were experiencing this as well). We all came in on Thursday with this in mind. A few of us found mentions of the N-Town plays in our research and the rest of us had mentions of cycle plays, which the N-Town plays are an example of, so we collectively decided to focus our efforts on researching cycle plays, and specifically the dramatic structure of the N-Town plays. 

I'm really appreciating the analogy "digging through shit" this week, mainly because that perfectly embodies how I feel about the progress we're making on this project. As I've said, one of the first realizations I've made about this topic is how vast it is. The Medieval period alone spans a period of ten centuries, and it's been incredibly overwhelming to try to narrow our focus to be able to present a concise, informative, and interesting presentation on this period in Theater History. Though it is only the beginning of this process, I feel like we don't have a strong footing for this project yet.  

Format.

When formatting our presentation our group approached this first by examining what we knew. Which honestly at first wasn't a lot. So after further questions and discussion we were able to break down our research topic into broader questions that we wanted to investigate. By stepping back a bit on cycle plays in the medieval period, we where able to grasp a little better what we were dealing with in terms of the quality and structure of these cycle plays. While we still have questions regarding historical impacts, the structure of each cycle group individually, the N-Town Plays and how they relate to one another. We as a group, with the research we have done together and individually at this point, were able to roughly break down a presentation structure that would allow our audience to first step back on our topic and then zoom in a little. Which I feel reflects the new approach to our research.

With our presentation structure in mind we began to discuss what to include and how to present our findings with the right amount of material to both inform, and yet not overwhelm our audience with a plethora of hard facts. Our main goal was to keep our audiences engaged and curious. After all, we do not plan to solve anything with this research, we hope to better understand the structure and unravel a bit of the mystery surrounding these cycle plays. What we really hope is that this too is what are peers are able to start doing after we present. Speaking presentations can get dull, it is as simple as that, and almost everyone has had to sit through one of these dull presentations. With a good build of information, a creative flow with visual representation of research, and engaging enthusiasm we plan to keep this presentation to a dull minimum.

What we decided upon was a power point presentation to aid in our vocal presentation. In this we will include images, important points, and fun facts... all for audiences viewing pleasure. Also, costumes?

Our specific outline of things we will discuss is stated bellow.

OUTLINE:
- Engaging, but brief introduction to topic
- "Cycle Plays" -- What are they?!
- Specifically, what is their purpose? How was that purpose decided upon?
- The N-Town Plays
(such as what are they, why are they called that, why are the authors anonymous, why so many revisions, etc.)
- A little compare / contrast of N-Town vs. the other cycle plays
- Conclusion ???


--Lindsey & Group

Dario's Individual Entry: Week 1.

During this first week of research my group and I have discovered that the focus of our topic is a rather broad and obscure one. We have chosen to research specifically the N-Town cycles which are a compilation of plays that basically re-staged biblical stories. The first problem with this is that there isn't really any specific playwrights, because they're all biblical stories. Originally our proposal was going to focus on how the structure of specific N-Town plays were affected by the economic, social, and political structure of 15th Century Medieval England. However, after talking this over with Will we came to the conclusion that we need to focus on What are the Cycle Plays? What is their definition? and What was their purpose? Along with these questions, How are the N-Town Plays different compared to the othe group cycled plays?
      Way in the beginning of the research process, when Will first assigned us our topic, I found a couple of books and articles that peaked my interest. One of them is a book called "Drama in the Middle Ages", and in it there are numerous articles about said topic. There is one specifically that focuses on Narrative Bible Cycles in Medieval Art and Drama. There are four major extant mystery cycles: The plays of York, Chester, Wakefield, and N-Town. These cycles are characterized by a selection of episodes which mainly recount events from the book of Genesis and Exodus. Evidently, the N-Town cycle includes a large number of plays dealing with the questionable authenticity of Mary. This is interesting because it irks the question of why the church allowed plays that questioned the authenticity of Mary, if they were the ones who controlled what was being staged? Why do we know so little about the N-Town plays?
   As I delve further into my research I hope to answer these questions in full detail.

Davidson, Clifford, and John H. Stroupe. Narrative Bible Cycles in Medieval Art and Drama. Drama in the Middle Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays: Second Series. New York, NY: AMS, 1991. 118-20. Print.

Brianna Haskell's Individual Entry: Week #1

These first couple of weeks of investigating medieval church drama, I have come across a couple informative articles.  I really wanted to begin this project by investigating the structure of both the time period and the type of theater being done then, without focusing too much on specifics.  It was not until later in the week, coming up with our proposal that I really started to focus my research on the N-Town plays.  The first article of substance I read was a general overview of what medieval church theater comprised of, titled European Drama in the Middle Ages written in 2002 by S. Robinson.  Not having any previous knowledge of the dramatic structure of medieval church drama and very little information on the social structure of the time period, this article gave me a well-rounded, but brief overview of both of these.  In this article I was given an introduction to the social structure of the middle Ages.

The medieval time period consisted of a social and political structure surrounding the Catholic Church.  In the early Middle Ages the church was instrumental to the creation of theater. Theater before this period was traveling theater that was considered sinful and before the churches regulation of Theater it was not nearly as often performed as when it became church regulated.  After the first liturgical drama was written and performed there then came an explosion of plays, all based on Biblical stories, often the performances themselves controlled heavily by the church.  In these early times plays that were not approved by the church simply were not done.  The article then goes on to explain the transcendence of the Biblical stories throughout the middle ages into how they became less and less Church regulated.  There is a gradual shift in the freedom of theater that happens late into the medieval times.

I found the aspect of the overwhelming Church regulation of theater and how that began to dissolve throughout the years very interesting. In the article it is not mentioned exactly how that occurred so that is something I am hoping to find further information on.  Although we need to focus on a specific set of decades I think it may also be interesting to incorporate how theater in the Middle Ages went from Liturgical to Vernacular and how and why the Church began to lose control over the regulation of Theater.  This leads me to questions such as; did the church decide to weaken its regulation of theater? Or was theater and its artist at the time becoming so popular and powerful that theater became bigger than the church, and therefore no longer writing plays under its regulation?

As a group we came to the conclusion to focus on the N-Town Plays (liturgical drama) in comparison to other plays, possibly the York Town plays.  I’m unsure if the information I got from this article will tie in easily to our proposal but I’m hoping that there can be some comparisons and discoveries made for the ideas presented in that article that relate to our final presentation.  The main idea that I find most captivating being the gradual change of the dramatic structure of theater in the Middle Ages, going from Liturgical to Vernacular over a few centuries.

Robinson, Scott. European Drama in the Middle Ages. 2002. 

Lindsey's Individual Entry Week 1: A Structure

S T R U C T U R E

What affects a structure? I've spent some time toying with this question throughout the week. While our group has landed upon further researching the dramatic structure of the late Middle English cycle plays, specifically at the N-Town Plays, we have spent even more time investigating the time period and developing our own structure. Many different sources impact our group's structure of this project, similarly to the outside forces that were impacting the dramatic structure of the 15th century medieval period. With a mass of information available for the Middle Ages in England, what proved most important in developing a structure was first digging through a mass amount of text in order to find what was relatable to other pieces of information, and what we could actually use. I told my group in class that it felt as if we were slowly chipping away at a huge block of ice in order to find a small piece of useful treasure.

In my personal research I have been able to "chip away" at a decent amount of material. So far, I have been able to find roughly 2, possibly 3 sources what have proved helpful for me in research, with the hope to find even more sources to shed light on this topic. One of my sources, Medieval English Drama; Essays Critical And Contextual, greatly aided in my understanding of the initial structure of cycle plays. A quote that I found most insightful in this source, regarding the question of structure uniformity in the different Middle English cycle plays (which lead me to an interest in investigating the N-Town Plays 'or the Hegge cycle' further) was, "The proposal that the Middle English cycle plays are unified seems inconsistent with their multiple authorship and the continuous revision they underwent. Yet, we must be prepared to admit, as Hardin Craig, for example does with respect to the Hegge cycle, the marvel of 'a theological intelligence motivated by structural imagination that lasted from age to age in the development of a great cycle of mystery plays.'" What this quote is doing is stating that despite what seems to be just a chronological cycle of loosely strung together plays, what actually we need to be investigating is how religion impacts the period and motivates the structure created that gave us these great cycle plays. What I chose to do because of this was to further research the N-Town Plays, some times are referred to as mystery plays. Currently I am digging through information both about the time period, the dramatic structure of the cycle plays, as well as the N-Town Plays and how their structure varied and was influenced by religion and the politics of the time. One question I would like to answer is why these plays underwent constant revision. My hope is to make even more sense of the structure I am laying out this information in, as I am trying to further break down the structure of these cycle plays.

In regards to the tools this class has already laid out for me, I feel confident in the fact and I can begin breaking down information and the research the group and myself are bringing in for our topic. In other words, we will continue to effectively dig through "shit," in order to hopefully learn something about how theatre and society functioned in the 15th century.

- Lindsey Siders


Sources Found:

Fitzhenry, William. “The N-Town Plays and the Politics of Metatheatre.” Studies in                    Philology 100.1 (Winter 2003): 22-43. Print. 

Taylor, Jerome, and Alan H. Nelson. Medieval English Drama; Essays Critical And Contextual. Ed. Jerome Taylor And Alan H. Nelson. n.p. Chicago, University of  Chicago Press, 1972. Print.

Proposal

   Our research topic is Medieval Church Drama/Theatre which is a heavily broad topic, and so we as a group tried to condense it down to a specific time period. At first we chose to go with the late 15th century, and decided that we would spend the rest of our time finding possible plays to focus on. We came across the N-Town plays and had trouble researching as to what they were, who they were written by, and when they were written. We struggled with delving into the specifics of how these plays existed, and always ended up in a dead end. So, we consulted with our instructors as to why we were having such troubles, and came to the realization that the N-town plays are one of four cycle plays done approximately in the 15th century. These four major extant mystery cycles are: the plays of York, Chester, Wakefield, and N-town. The N-town plays just happen to be the most mysterious of all the cycle plays. There is little evidence to show who they were written/interpreted by, and when they were written.

   This brought light into why we were having such a hard time researching them, because very little is known about them. In fact, it's impossible to do any sort of presentation that would deeply explain the nature of the N-town plays. So, we had a decision to make: 1. Choose any of the other three cycle plays, because there is way more information on those that we can grapple with...or 2. We choose to stick wight the N-town plays and research about why it's so hard to find legitimate information on them. We decided to go with the second option. 

   We want to know why the N-town plays are called the "N-town" plays, what does "N-town" mean? How come so little is known about them? How can we compare the other cycle plays in relation to N-town plays so that we may further understand their dramatic structure? How were they staged? These are all questions that we need to grapple with so that we may teach our findings to our peers. 

   We have found that at the beginning of this period, the church was heavily involved in regulating all aspects of theatre. Theater was considered the devils work, so the only plays that were performed were ones that showed biblical stories. These plays were also only performed inside the church. As this period progressed and started to move towards the Renaissance period, the church became less involved, giving more freedom to the playwrights at the time. Plays were performed outside in the churchyard, and then were able to be performed on the streets. There would frequently be moving wagons that could set up and perform almost anywhere.
 
   By the end of this process, we hope to have a better understanding of the structure, nature, and influence of the cycle plays, and N-town plays specifically. 

Sources:

Alexandrina, Iotheca, Compiled By Hadir Ashraf & Manar Badr, and 1. "Medieval Drama." Medieval Drama (n.d.): n. pag. Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Web

Davidson, Clifford, C. J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe. Narrative Bible Cycles in Medieval Art and Drama. The Drama of the Middle Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays. New York, NY: AMS, 1982. 118-36. Print

Fitzhenry, William. “The N-Town Plays and the Politics of Metatheatre.” Studies in                    Philology 100.1 (Winter 2003): 22-43. Print.

Ogden, Dunbar H. The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church. Newark, DE: U of Delaware, 2002. Print.

Taylor, Jerome, and Alan H. Nelson. Medieval English Drama; Essays Critical And Contextual. Ed. Jerome Taylor And Alan H. Nelson. n.p. Chicago, University of  Chicago Press, 1972. Print.