Summarize the following text to main points and sub-points and make detailed explain for them:

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Department of English Literature  
Second Year / 1st term 
Drama 
 
Good Morning; 
     I want to start by welcoming you all to the first semester of the second 
year. I hope it will be a fruitful year for all of you. 
     I am going to teach you the drama course for this semester, we are 
actually going to start with medieval drama in the first part of the course in 
order to pave the way for the renaissance drama in the second part of the 
course. 
This means that drama course is going to be divided into two main parts: 
1. Medieval Drama 
2. Renaissance Drama 
     Although we have two parts, you need to bear in mind that these two 
parts are interconnected. There is a connection between medieval drama 
and renaissance drama, this interconnection is so important, it's going to 
help us move from the first part to the second part in a smooth way. 
The reason why these two parts are interconnected; (namely medieval 
drama and renaissance drama), is that there is a kind of influence that 
medieval drama had on renaissance drama. 
 
• The first part: Medieval Drama: 
The focus of the first part will be on a play called Everyman. The writer 
of Everyman is anonymous; it means we don't know the name of the 
writer of this play. 
 
• The second part: Renaissance Drama: 
In the second part we will be focusing on Dr. Faustus by Christopher 
Marlowe 
     Before we start with Everyman, we are going to start the historical 
background of the play. This is before reading the text of the play just to 
have an idea about how life was like in that age. We need to look at certain 
things in the historical background which might be relevant to the text or 
can be traced in the text itself, we need to look into the religious and 
political atmosphere that is reflected in the play and that took place in the 
middle ages. We'll do the same before we read Dr. Faustus. 
Lecture 1 
Rahaf M. Al-rifai 
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     As you can see Everyman is a very short play, it's only thirty five pages 
no more. It is very easy to read and discuss because it's very simple, so we 
are going to spend a longer time focusing on Dr. Faustus. 
 
Medieval Drama 
 
     Medieval Drama belongs to the middle ages and that means, roughly 
speaking, between 1066 and 1500. These are not precise dates of course. 
     Medieval Drama started in the church actually, it was purely 
religious at the beginning, it was dealing with episodes from the Bible. 
     Does that mean there was no drama before the medieval times? Of 
course no. we had the Roman classical drama before the middle ages. 
     It was with the advent of Christianity that drama ceased to have a role 
in people's life, that's because the church instructed people that drama has 
to do with immortality. So drama was thought to be corrupting people, 
therefore, because of the influence of the church, drama was prohibited. 
     Later on, in the middle ages it was in the church itself that drama found 
its way back into the life of people. How? Why? To what end? Why did 
the church allow drama once again? The church of course did not really 
intend to bring drama back to life. that was not the real purpose that the 
church had in mind. You will know the real purpose in few minutes. 
     The earlier performances in the medieval period happened in the 
church and within the walls of the church. The performers were 
actually priests and the subject matter of drama was purely religious. 
The subject matter dealt with episodes from the Bible like the life and 
death of Jesus Christ. 
     The first dramatic piece that was performed in the church was about the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a very short play called "Easter Trope". 
It is about three ladies all called "Mary", (Mary the mother of Jesus Christ, 
Mary her sister, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene), who go to 
see the body of Jesus Christ in the tomb. On their way they meet an angel 
who tells them that you will not find the body here, because Jesus Christ 
has risen as he foretold, he has risen to heaven. 
     This same story of the play was later on developed to be longer and to 
have more details and more actors, but this is how it started. Of course the 
actors of this performance were the priests of the church, and the language 
used was Latin. Priests at that time spoke Latin. 
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     This type of drama was originated in the church and it was called 
Liturgical Drama. 
     As you all might know, at that time, the Bible was in Latin, it was not 
translated at that time yet. People who used to attend the congregation in 
the church were mainly illiterate people; they did not understand nor speak 
Latin. People used to go to the church, sit there, listen to the priest reciting 
his sermon and preaching them in Latin. He was telling them about the 
Bible in Latin, yet they did not understand what was said, they did not even 
understand the general ideas. 
     So with the introduction of these performances, the communication 
between the priests and the congregation increased. 
     The church used drama as a tool to teach people or the 
congregation about the stories of Jesus Christ. The Bible was written in 
Latin as we mentioned and the church wanted to find a way out to teach 
the congregation about the stories of the life and death of Jesus Christ, the 
easiest way was to perform those stories to the congregation. 
     Now more people are more involved, they understand more and they 
are interacting with the stories that are being shown to them. The language 
used was still Latin, but here we have priests acting which helped the 
congregation have an idea about what is being said. The congregation can 
see people acting and wearing costumes, they can see the angel, they can 
see the three Maries. This promoted better interaction between the 
priests of the church and the congregation. 
     The audience used to be affected by such type of drama, and that was 
the mission that the church wanted to achieve out of performing these 
stories. Of course, there was a special costume and a special music for such 
stories, there was a choir singing as well. 
     So, the subject matter was purely religious and it was mainly dealing 
with the life and death of Jesus Christ. At the beginning, they started with 
Easter and then they started talking about Christmas as well. 
Later on, the church was no longer able to keep containing these 
performances within the walls of the church. So the performances started 
moving outside the church, the performances took place in the church yard, 
from now on, they started moving farther away from the church to different 
parts in towns such as town halls. 
     With this change of place and location, other changes took place as well, 
there were changes in relation to the performers, the language used, and 
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the subject matter. Does that mean that the subject matter was no religious 
anymore? Actually no, it was still religious but not only dealing with the 
life and death of Jesus Christ. There were stories from the Bible such as 
the Fall of Adam, Cane and Able, and the Doomsday. As you can see, these 
stories are religious and they are taken from the Bible but they are not 
confined to the life and death of Jesus Christ.  
Let's talk about society in the middle Ages: 
 
Society in the middle Ages 
 
     Most of people in the middle ages were illiterate, they used to go to the 
church and listen to the sermon in Latin although they did not speak nor 
understand Latin. 
     Also the majority of people belonged to the poor class who had nothing, 
they used to work in lands and in agriculture but they did not possess these 
lands, these lands were possessed by the lords and the nobles. 
     What took place then was very much similar to the feudal system. In 
other words, the lands were owned by the lords and the nobles who were 
rich, and people who worked in these lands did not own anything. They 
worked in these lands to get their wages in order to support their families. 
But they were very poor. 
     He church that ruled was the Catholic Church. The church was not 
simply a place where people did their religious duties or worshipped God. 
The church controlled every aspect of life in the middle ages. 
     The priests and bishops had a great authority. They were very powerful; 
they had a very important role to play in the lives of people. They 
controlled people and they used to tell them what to do and what not to do, 
they controlled people via church. 
    As we said last time, performances started to move outside the church, 
outside the building of the church, this is where the church started having 
less power. The movement outside the church affected the plays and the 
performances themselves. As we said earlier, the performances used to be 
purely religious, when they moved outside the church; they started to 
become less religious. 
Types of Medieval Drama 
     Under the name medi

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