Spiritual game

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Spiritual game. Depiction of a game scene from A Double Poetic Act and Spiritual Game (1652)

The religious drama (also spiritual drama or liturgical game is) a form of European medieval theater , originally as part of the Christian liturgy was born. Since the high Middle Ages it served to proclaim salvation in a dramatic form and developed into several popular genres up to the modern age , which are cultivated up to the present day.

history

Origin and development

Religious drama developed from the 10th century from the sung on religious acts tropics . Hence its text was originally in Latin. The Ostertropus , which deals with the walk of Mary to Jesus' grave, became the basis of the Easter play due to its antiphonal structure . This form was expanded to include further scenes and plot elements from the biblical resurrection story , so that the Easter plays grew into extensive dramas until their heyday in the 13th century, some of them already in the vernacular languages ​​of the time. Following the example of Ostertropus that developed in the 11th century and the 13th century Weihnachtstropus Christmas play , whose plot was the core proclamation to the shepherds in the field. This form is cultivated to the present day as a nativity scene in a folk setting, regionally also in the respective dialects . At the same time, the first Passion Play , which expanded the Easter Play to include the Passion of Christ , and various forms of processional plays as part of the Christian festivals were created. What the game forms have in common, which also incorporate profane customs and scenes into the game plot, is the humanization of the sacred in a Christian-religious context. Further developments that emerged from the spiritual game are the miracle and mystery game . The striking analogy that exists between these two can be traced back to their common origin.

The spiritual game changed in the 14th century under the influence of the flourishing bourgeois culture. On the one hand, it was detached from the liturgical framework and was performed - partly on the orders of the church - at non-church venues, often also in the open air on marketplaces, whereby these performances were made up of crowd scenes, more elaborate costumes and furnishings as well as the prevalent vernacular languages popularized spiritual play and brought it close to the carnival game . The design and production were the responsibility of the citizens, often the passion brotherhoods of the cities. On the other hand, the character of the games changed from the symbolic visualization of salvation to realistic, often drastic to obscene representations. At the same time, the spiritual game remained liturgically bound up into this epoch and was strictly based on the material from the Bible and the legends of the saints , without allowing poetic creations and artistic freedom.

From the 15th century, the spiritual game entered a late phase. The length of the games had sometimes grown to several thousand verses. As a result, the performances took several days and were ultimately more like folk festivals. The crowd scenes increased significantly, the population was again included quasi-liturgically through common prayer and chanting.

Decline

The humanistic Renaissance culture, which led to new forms of theater through the renewed reception of the Greek and Roman drama, and the Reformation , which, according to Martin Luther's instruction, rejected the spiritual play because of its proximity to the liturgy, led to the liturgical drama in the first Half of the 16th century disappeared. It only survived in regions strongly influenced by Catholicism, e.g. B. in Spain, up to the Counter Reformation in the 16th century. A well-known example from Germany is the Oberammergau Passion Play , which has been performed since 1634 .

Influences of spiritual play have since been productive in Protestant school drama and in Latin Jesuit theater. Due to the change from community games to court games, which arose as a result of changed political and social conditions and the new role of the royal courts as cultural bearers of the absolutist age, the naive religious openness of the Middle Ages also gave way to a dualistic view of this world and the hereafter.

With the speech oratorios Johann Klajs ( Resurrection of Jesus Christ , Hell and Ascension of Jesus Christ ), the oratorio and oratorio passion music popular especially in the 17th and 18th centuries began. In contrast, theater censorship in the 18th and 19th centuries severely restricted religious subjects on the stage. In the 19th century, religious melodramas became common in some cities as a "proletarian" form of theater.

The attempts by Zacharias Werner and other theorists to revive the spiritual play as an alternative to the drama of the 19th century only led to isolated (adapted) works such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Jedermann (1911) and Das Salzburger Großes Welttheater (1922), im Renouveau catholique Paul Claudel's Le soulier de satin (1925), in music theater finally Carl Orff's Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione (1956), Ludus de nato Infante mirificus (1960) and De temporum fine comoedia (1973/77) as well as in Benjamin Britten's Church Parables .

Match practice

The typical stage form for the spiritual games that were performed in public space was the simultaneous stage ; the superstructures were at different points in a square, spectators and actors moving back and forth between the parts of the stage for each scene . The scenes opened and closed with a precursor with an introduction or moralizing summary for the audience. Explanatory comments addressed to the audience during the game scenes and the calls for prayer and song are also documented. Drama texts, playing instructions, comments and instructions for the stage design are summarized in conducting roles. The game emphasized the declamation more than the facial expression of the roles.

Expressions in various European languages

The influence of the languages ​​that replaced Latin gave rise to "national" traditions from the 14th century onwards. It only had its first beginnings in the Antichrist poetry , e.g. B. in the Latin Ludus de Antichristo (around 1160), and in the German world court game . The most important late medieval genre in the German-speaking area were the Passion Plays, which extended the plot beyond the Easter event to the entire Christian salvation history of the Old and New Testament, from creation and the fall of man to the resurrection of Christ.

In the English theater history comprehensive cycle emerged whose main genres Corpus Christi plays, and since the mid-14th century, Morality plays (Engl. " Moralities ") were. In the center of the game plot stood the struggle between good and bad forces (see Vice ), virtues and vices or the angel and devil for the human soul. The games often included contrasting comic elements. The carriage stage was the preferred stage construction.

The development of the French games started much earlier in the 12th century with an Anglo- Norman game of Adam and the game of Niklas by Jean Bodel (around 1200). The characteristic shape was the play of mysteries, the fabrics were, in addition to biblical stories, mainly saints' legends. While German and English games were mainly written by anonymous authors, poets known by name appeared for the first time in France. In addition to Bodel, these were Eustache Marcadé and Simon Gréban . The pantomime mystères mimes , which were presented as an early form of the tableaux vivants , play a special role . The productions showed a tendency towards the effective and theatrical early on, for which the stage machinery was also used. Funny and serious scenes were strictly separated.

In the Netherlands , too , mimes were known as stomme spelen . In addition to the allegorical pewter morality and the miracle games, they were among the most important genres.

The Italian development proceeded largely apart from the great European literatures. Unlike in other countries, the spiritual games did not become popular language games for citizens, but remained the task of the spiritual brotherhoods until the 15th century. The main genres were the Laude drammatiche ( cf.Lauda ), forms similar to processional games, which developed from the ballads sung in processions through dialogue into small dramatic scenes, and the Devozione , a form of the sermon game that embellished the sermon with living images and dialogue scenes. Both genres were only included in the city festivals in the course of the 15th century and culminated in the Sacra rappresentazione . As in France, in addition to biblical material, saints legends were also processed, a particular focus of the Italian theater was on the splendid baroque furnishings, for which important painters and sculptors of their time worked.

The heyday of the spiritual game in Spanish literature followed relatively late in the Siglo de Oro during the 16th and 17th centuries with Lope de Vega , Tirso de Molina and Pedro Calderón de la Barca . The most important form was the sacramental car .

literature

See also