Why were plays important during the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

From a highly simplistic point of view, the purpose of medieval theater was to instruct people on The Bible and Christian morality.

Actually, however, there was no one purpose for medieval theater. The Middle Ages lasted a thousand years, and involved every culture in Europe, and not all places and times were the same. Byzantine theater was different from what was happening in France or England, and theater of the Early Middle Ages was different from what was happening later on.

As an example, early medieval Byzantine theater is believed to have had a large amount of sexual content, and when Justinian I married, two years before he became emperor, there was a fair amount of outrage, because his wife, Theodora, was an actress, and this was regarded as equivalent to her being a prostitute.

Even if we confine our interest to the West, there was lack of uniformity of purpose in theater. There are five major types of medieval plays, and three of them oriented toward spiritual values were Morality Plays, Miracle Plays, and Mystery Plays. Additionally, there were Mummers' Plays, which retained a fair amount of pagan material and tended to be rather rowdy, and Manners Plays, which were entirely secular.

Very little remains of the theatrical material from the Early Middle Ages, but the example called Querolus, which was written a few years before the Fall of Rome, was of pagan origin, and was revived in the 12th century. Other secular plays became more important about the same time.

We should remember that most book copying was done in monasteries for Church purposes. Mummers' Plays were of folk origin, probably often not written down, and uninteresting objects for churchmen to preserve. This may give us a somewhat slanted view of the time.

Answer 2

The play helped people understand the church services