New hreligion and medieval lit
New hreligion and medieval litAs The Norton Anthology of English Literature says, "By far the larger proportion of surviving literature in Middle as in Old English is religious" (7). This shouldn't be surprising since we know education had a religious affiliation; men were educated, went to "universities" to become clerics. "The church offered a path for gifted commoners to make a career" (7), but left the majority of commoners illiterate. The fact that Latin was the language of education and books were time consuming to produce and expensive only compounded the problem. The situation was alleviated somewhat with William Caxton's introduction to type-setting in 1474, when he printed the first book in English. This new method of printing was the key to increasing the availability of texts and lowering the cost. But the church had overwhelming influence and plenty of funds to produce literature and wasn't terribly interested in a literate following, it only meant more people would be reading and developing their own interpretations of the scripture. The church knew that the stories and ideas of the Bible could effectively be passed on through sermons and mystery and morality plays.
Although they both have the primary mission of conveying biblical messages, mystery and morality plays have considerable differences. The "mystery" in mystery plays refers to "the spiritual mystery of Christ's redemption of humankind" (308). Mystery plays were typically written in "cycles" (a series) that would begin with the Creation, chronicle the major events of the Old Testament through the New Testament and the Last Judgment. The mystery plays "endeavored to make the Christian religion more real to the unlearned by dramatizing significant events in biblical history and by showing what these events meant in terms of human experience" (363). They are thought to have evolved from the liturgies and plays that were conducted in Latin. Mystery plays produced in the vernacular in the streets of towns were a way of reaching a wide audience that included educated laypeople and clerics as well as the unlearned folk. The authors of these plays usually broadened their appeal by giving the characters of the plays the appearance and characters of contemporary men and women. The Wakefield Master, "probably a highly educated cleric stationed in the vicinity of Wakefield" (319), did this in his play The Second Shepherds' Play. "As the play opens, the shepherds complain about the cold, the taxes, and the high-handed treatment they get from the gentry--evils closer to shepherds on the Yorkshire moors than to those keeping their flocks near Bethlehem" (319), this convention would only help the lay people identify with the characters and make the religious message, that Christian charity doesn't go unrewarded, seem more personal.
The Christian charity of the shepherds is seen first in their offering a sixpence to Mak's newborn son and then in their mercy toward him when they find out his "son" is really a stolen sheep in disguise. This farcical parody of Christ in the manger is then offset by...
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