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The Evolution of the Form of Plays in English During the Renaissance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

T. H. Howard-Hill
T. H. Howard-Hill*
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Extract

The modern arrangement of the texts of plays evolved from the confluence of two distinct methods of setting out plays for readers and theatrical use. The earliest, which I shall call the native tradition, had its seeds in the European liturgical drama and is most clearly manifested in the manuscripts of the early moral plays and of guild plays associated with Corpus Christi from the fourteenth century to the cessation of the performances late in the sixteenth century. The second is the classical method, exemplified by the early printings of the plays of Terence, Plautus, and Seneca from 1470 onwards and adopted by the university educated writers of secular plays in the sixteenth century.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 112 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1990

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