Medieval drama (3)

In the Middle Ages developed another form of drama: miracle and mystery plays, although they deal religious themes, they had also elements of humor.
They derived from religious festival that were also opportunities for entertainment, in fact, the most important stories from the Bible were performed like dialogues told in Latin between the chorus and the priest.
Then, these performances developed in the churchyard and in another parts of the town among the ordinary people, so the Latin was replaced by vulgar language.

Miracle and mistery plays are often used like synonymous but there is a distinction: miracle plays used stories of the lives of the saints, while mystery plays represented events narrated in the Bible.
Althought there were not theatres yet, the plays were represented outdoors on movable stages called pageants. They were drawn by horses and they stopped in some places in particular in the markets.
Each pageant represented an episode of the story, so people moved from one pageant to another one.
Morality plays were a form of religious and allegorical drama with which the message of the Bible could be addressed to the illiterate. But the characters (which were not taken from the Bible) were symbols of vices and virtus, and they were not biblical character.
The most important morality play is Everyman, dated about 15th century. The characters represented universal ideas and qualities and they are personifications of aspects of human life.