Italian Drama during the Medieval Period - Essay Example

Please put here Please put your here Please put the of the here 24th September 2008 Italian Drama during the Medieval Period Medieval drama or medieval theatres refers to the theatres of Europe and the period is believed to be between the fall of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance (Nation Master.com). The term medieval drama refers to a plethora of genres because the period of medieval drama stated above covers an approximate figure of more than thousand forms of art and at the same time an entire continent. The Roman Catholic Church banned the performances in theatres. This was during the beginning of the middle ages. The reason behind the church doing so was mainly to curb the immoderation on the Roman theatres. To this factor, other political and economic factors also added up and the entertainment industry was not being supported well and hence started declining. The medieval drama initially came into being as an incident of service on certain special days and occasions of the ecclesiastical year in an illustrative manner. Until it grew strong, medieval drama was confined to the interior walls of the church (Theatre History.com). But once it grew strong and started gaining fame, the medieval drama lasted for very long with religious intent. Almost throughout the entire continent of Europe, the history of the medieval drama is more or less the same. "The religious drama of England is very like that of France (from which, indeed, it is in some measure derived), just as the religious drama of Italy is like that of Spain, although neither of these had any appreciable influence on the other (Theatre History.com)." For instance, if a miracle play is considered the same native treatment is given for life as it is given in a mystery. Even the story construction is equally panoramic in both kinds of plays. In addition to these, even the mixture of the comedy incidents, apparent irreverence and also the circumstances of the performances are also one and the same in both kinds of plays. "The middle ages had an appetite for allegory quite as vigorous as the liking for legend; and after the saintly biographies had been set on the stage as miracle-plays, allegory was also cast into dialogue, and thus we have the moral-plays (Tebyan.net)." The morality was considered as a medieval forerunner of today's modern novel and can be defined as an attempt for the modernization of a sermon whereas a mystery is a simple dramatization of plain and simple text. During the medieval period people never used to make a distinction between two different kinds of plays. People in the medieval period were not trained enough to make a distinction between the "canonical books and the Apocrypha, or even between the Scriptures and the legends of the saints (Tebyan.net)". Towards the end of the seventeenth century and during the early eighteenth century, improvised comedy which is named as commedia dell' arte began to decline. Despite this decline, the various characters which were represented by different types of masks and other situations of conventional comic still had a pace and a place on stage. The major reason for this decline in the fame of the Italian comedy was because of the then popularizing yet preposterous entertainments along with the new art of opera (Theatre Database). It was a person name Carlo Goldoni, who brought back life to the then declining comedy in Italy. He was born in the year 1707 and was a native of the city of Venice. Almost all of his writings are depicted with liveliness which describes all of the comedians who were born in Italy with a light-hearted temperament that too in a remarkable and respectable manner. Though his first attempt of a melodrama named Amalasunta was not very successful, his second attempt was quite successful. Carlo Goldoni is credited with one hundred and sixty comedies. Out of these, twenty works were in prose and the rest were prose. The prose penned by him was either Venetian dialect or in the national language. Then was the turn of Carlo Gozzi to bring life to Italian Drama especially Italian comedy. Carlo Gozzi dramatized in a fantastic and familiar manner most of the famous fairy tales and equipped them with settings which are magnificent. Some of the fairy tales that were amazingly dramatized by him and given to the public were Bluebeard and the Sleeping Beauty. The Academy of Arcadians was started in the city of Rome towards the end of the seventeenth century. The writers in Italy who were involved in writing tragedy followed the same old tradition and format of writing and this led to even the Italian tragedy getting stale day after day. It was the effort made by the Academy of Arcadians that brought life into tragedy and also broadened the field of tragedy writing by abolishing the old style of writings and stage trappings. Some of the famous writers of tragedy who deserve to remember in this scenario of bringing life to Italian tragedy were Scipione Maffei and Metastasio. Among these the former possessed undeniable talent which was additionally combined with sincere feelings. Merope, a tragedy written by Scipione Maffei in the year 1713 won great accolades. Vittorio Alfieri is another famous name that needs to be remembered when discussing about playwrights of Italy. He had in himself a passion to liberalize the spirit within human beings. He believed that Italian drama could be purified in an effective manner if the classic modes were re-introduced into the Italian drama. He wrote all his works with this belief only. If his plays are noticed, all the personages remained the same from beginning to end. Though he was felt to be violent in his expressions by many, alongside he even possessed a kind of burning intensity. Though there was sentiment present in his tragedies he was simultaneously able to instill a kind of sublimity and wisdom too in to the tragedies written by him. He has written a total of nineteen Italian dramas out of which five had possessed the main theme of struggle for freedom. Bibliography About.Com. Medieval History. 2008. 24 September 2008 . Answers.Com. Italian Drama. 21 August 2008. 24 September 2008 . Endors, Jody. The Medieval theatre of Cruelty. New York: Cornell University, 1999. Frank, Grace. The Medieval French Drama. Clarendon Press - Oxford: Oxford, 1954. Goldstein, Leonard. The Origin of Medieval Drama. New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004. Nation Master.com. Encycolpedia - Medieval Drama. 2 May 2003. 24 September 2008 . Tebyan.net. The Medieval Drama. 1 December 2005. 24 September 2008 . Theatre Database. Italian Drama in the Eighteenth Century. 23 March 2002. 24 Spetember 2008 . Theatre History.com. The Medieval Drama. 21 February 2002. 24 September 2008 . Williams, Arnold. The Drama of medieval En gland. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1961. Read More