From 1000 AD forward, cathedrals and monastery chapels increasingly used simple drama to illustrate the Latin Bible reading. They didn’t invent lines, nor did they create stage sets. But they did use very simple arrangements, like a table and chair, or a special type of robe, to serve as set and costume. We have stage directions written in the margins of some readings, telling when the “angel” or “prophet” was to enter.
But in church, it all had to be serious, and it was spoken in Latin. Many people would have known what the simpler lines meant even if they did not have formal schooling, as long as they attended services enough to have heard them several times. But it still was not their language.
The next step was to stage Bible story plays outside of the church, and in the local language. Our earliest manuscripts like this are in Old Spanish and Norman French. The Spanish play was about the “Three Kings” of the Christmas story. Christmas lent itself to Bible stories better than Easter, which was the high point of the church drama cycle, because Easter’s story was so solemn. The stories of Jesus’ birth could have extra lines invented, even including some humor. Christmas at court was already a time of drinking and traveling musicians putting on shows, so it was natural to include plays about the Bible story.
Actors were always men; in church the monks unselfconsciously played women like Mary Magdalen, and it was the same outside the church. But these plays used costume and stage setting in more deliberate ways. Monks in church did not put on wimples to portray women, but outside the church, actors did. We don’t know how much staging the earliest plays had, since it could be very minimal and yet still impress the locals. We have detailed plans for later dramas, which we’ll get to. Let’s look next at “Adam and Eve” in more detail to see how drama began to use invention and staging.