By the 900s, we know that Easter and Christmas liturgy was usually accompanied by simple acting by the monks. They didn’t think of it as a play, nor did they call it “ludus,” the normal Latin word for dramatic plays. They were just deepening the emotional content of the service to help worshipers experience the story fully.
Bishop Ethelwold of Winchester wrote the first account of how Easter drama was to be staged, so we know that this was done in England around 950. Obviously, there was probably much more of this than we have evidence for in writing, in other times and places.
Ethelwold directed that during the reading of the 3rd lesson, four monks were to slip out quietly and put on robes. They would stage a silent pageant when the reading described how the women who knew Jesus came looking for him at the tomb but found only an angel. The monks playing the women would have incense thuribles, while the angel held a palm. When the reading came to the angel’s question “Whom do you seek?” the monk playing the angel would chant the line, with the “women” chanting the reply “Jesus of Nazareth.” The angel chants, “Non est hic,” telling them not to seek the living among the dead, and the “women” would turn to the choir, singing “Alleluia.”
The angel had one more line: calling the women’s attention back, he would tell them “Venite et vidite locum,” come and see the place. At this dramatic moment, he lifted a veil from the box or niche that was stood for the actual tomb, and he showed them that it was now empty. A cross, wrapped in cloths, had been placed there during Friday night’s service, but now only the cloths remained. The cross itself had been removed in pre-dawn darkness. The “women” would take the cloths to the basilica’s central altar, singing “The Lord has risen from the dead,” and after this, the basilica would ring its bells.
This exchange was called a “trope.” Today, the word means a figure of speech or a recurring theme. It’s derived from Greek “tropos,” which means a turn (verb trepein, to turn). “Turn” came to signify a style or manner, so the basic meaning of “trope” is something like style or manner. But its early use is very specific. It refers to the notation of these extra lines, the exchange between characters, that was implied in the text but not stated in just that way. As time went by, many more tropes were added, not just the Easter “Quem quaeritis?”
This type of dramatic pageant continued to be staged all through the Middle Ages and probably on into modern times in places where the tradition was not interrupted by the Reformation. During the Reformation in England, many of the “sepulcher” boxes were destroyed, since this acting was viewed as idolatry. One of the sources I used for the entry in All Things Medieval was a registry of all undamaged or reparable sepulcher niches in England’s oldest churches.