You are looking at 1-9 of 9 entries for:
- All: Feast of Fools x
- Theatre x
Did you mean Fools, Feast of Fools, Feast of
Feast of Fools Reference library
The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre (2 ed.)
... of Fools , generic name for the New Year revels in European cathedrals and collegiate churches, when the minor clergy usurped the functions of their superiors and burlesqued the services of the Church. The practice may have arisen spontaneously, as an outlet for high spirits, or may be an echo of the Roman Saturnalia. It appears to have originated in France in about the 12th century, and from the beginning evidently included some form of crude drama. The proceedings opened with a procession headed by an elected ‘king’—in schools a boy bishop —riding on a...
Feast of Fools
liturgical Drama
Fool Reference library
The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre (2 ed.)
... , licensed buffoon of the medieval Feast of Fools , later an important member of the sociétés joyeuses of medieval France, not to be confused with the Court Fool . The traditional costume of the Fool, who was associated with such folk festivals as the morris dance and the mumming play (especially the Wooing Ceremony), was a hood with horns or ass's ears, and sometimes bells, covering the head and shoulders; a parti-coloured jacket and trousers, usually tight fitting; and sometimes a tail. He carried a marotte or bauble, either a replica of a fool...
carnival Reference library
Milla Riggio
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...which has only scattered records of Shrove Tuesday masquerading (alluded to in Norwich, 1443 ). But it can nonetheless be linked to the season of masquerade balls and plays that began at Christmas and carried through Shrovetide. In its broader sense, carnival can also be linked to the feast of fools or the boy bishop and to warm-weather festivities like May Day or midsummer games and St John's celebrations, as times of licence, revelry, masquerading, often associated with the social inversion that is but part of the carnival story. In the nineteenth...
Liturgical Drama Reference library
The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre (2 ed.)
...from the Feast of Fools , and its use may mark a determined effort by the Church to canalize the irrepressible licence of Christmas merrymaking by incorporating into its own more orderly proceedings a slight element of buffoonery. As long as the play remained within the church it was part of the liturgy, and the actors were priests, choirboys, and perhaps, later on, nuns. The dialogue, entirely in Latin, was chanted, not spoken, and the musical interludes were sung by the choir alone, with no participation by the congregation. By the end of the 13th...
religion and theatre Reference library
Eli Rozik, Eli Rozik, Eli Rozik, Eli Rozik, Eli Rozik, and Eli Rozik
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
... Phèdre . Some biblical and mythological figures were characterized as harbingers of the Christian fate, as Oedipus is made to seem in Corneille 's Oedipe . Eli Rozik Carnivalesque function Using theatre to provide a catharsis of the believers' stress brought on by strict observance of religious precepts has been practised since ancient times in the dramatic burlesque of gods. In Christianity, this carnivalesque function was fulfilled in a variety of feasts of fools . In such anti-rituals, a low-ranking cleric was usually elected to impersonate a...
medieval theatre in Europe Reference library
John Wesley Harris, John Wesley Harris, John Wesley Harris, John Wesley Harris, and John Wesley Harris
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...of Old Testament material. For example Arnoul Greban wrote a huge Passion play in which only 1,500 lines out of 30,000 dealt with the Old Testament, and those covered only The Creation , The Fall of Man , and The Murder of Abel . Large-scale open-air presentations of vernacular plays seem to have grown up quite quickly during the early fourteenth century, mainly as a result of Pope Clement V instituting the new feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) in 1311 , although many communities preferred to perform the pieces at Whitsun. The feast of...
Paris Reference library
Virginia Scott, Jan Clarke, W. D. Howarth, and David Bradby
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance
...renewal of its privilege, the Parlement denied the brothers the right to play mystères in their newly completed Hôtel de Bourgogne , but awarded them a monopoly of all theatre production. The result was the end of religious drama in Paris. The Confrérie rented its venue to, among others, an amateur brotherhood of sots (fools), the Enfants-sans-Souci. France had a long tradition of parodic and satiric performance, ranging from court entertainments to the extravagances of carnival . Again, Paris was no more nor less important to the development of secular...
