Towneley Plays | Homer A. Watt (essay date 1940)
Homer A. Watt (essay date 1940)
SOURCE: "The Dramatic Unity of the Secunda Pastorum" in Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown, New York University Press, 1940, pp. 158-66.
[In this influential early study of the literary value of The Second Shepherd's Play, Watt examines such aspects of the piece as structure, symbolism, parallelism, and use of music.]
Considered as effective drama many of the English miracle plays are, it must be admitted, pretty sorry stuff. Indeed, they could hardly be otherwise. The essential story was dictated by biblical material that did not always offer a dramatic conflict. In transferring this material from Bible to play the anonymous authors were concerned primarily with the task of putting brief episodes into dialogue form and not with that of developing action, conflict, characters. Where they tried to season the playlet with contemporary elements, they found themselves cramped by the...
[The entire page is 2979 words long]
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