How were plays written?

Answer 1

Morality plays were written to teach children or adults lessons of life in an enjoyable way.

Answer 2

This is a question which can have so many possible answers. Formerly plays were written with pen and paper, then typewriters, now word processors. Plays over the years have had a number of different conventions. The rise and fall of the three unities convention, the fourth wall convention, set conventions, casting conventions and so on would require a course on theatre history to cover.

If you are asking, "How does a playwright come up with a script?" well, first you have a story with some kind of dramatic movement. The playwright then sketches out the main lines of the play, saying who does what when. He may set up a structure where events in one part of the play balance those in others. This will resolve itself ultimately into a series of scenes. The scenes are then dramatised, characteristic dialogue is developed for particular characters, and running gags or thematic continuity or recurrent symbolism is added to help the coherence of the whole. After a number of rewrites you end up with something the playwright is probably not satisfied with, but the audience will be.