Theater in the Early Middle Ages:

Theater in the Early Middle Ages:

"In the early Middle Ages, churches began to stage dramatized versions of important biblical events.  The churches were faced with explaining a new religion to a majorly illiterate population, so these dramas visualized what would later be able to be read in the Bible.  These productions also celebrated annual religious events.  These productions evolved into liturgical dramas.  The earliest known liturgical drama is the Easter trope, Whom do you Seek, which dates circa 925.  Liturgical drama did not involve actors impersonating characters, but it did involve singing by two groups.

An important playwright in early Medieval times was Hrotsvit, a historian and aristocratic canoness from northern Germany in the 10th century.  Hrotsvit wrote six plays which she modeled after Terence’s comedies.  Though Terence’s comedies show ordinary human subjects and situations involving marriage, sex and love, Hrostvitput a moral and religious spin on Terence’s plays in order to avoid criticism from the church. 

She wrote a preface to her collection of plays which stated that her purpose for writing was to save Christians from the guilt that reading Classical Literature instilled in its readers.  She is the first recorded female playwright.  She is also wrote the first identified Western dramatic works of the post-classical era.  Her works were first published in 1501 and had a large influence on religious drama on the sixteenth century." (Simon Newman)

http://www.thefinertimes.com/Middle-Ages/theatre-in-the-middle-ages.html

My feedback:

There were more women and men play writes that came after but Hrotscit is the most famous name in the begining of theatre. To me this is important because I love going to the theatre and I love watching someone work come to life. Being an actor and having a background in the theatre I have always been interested in the beginning works that started. I have always found that the original play form the middle ages always had a better storyline than what is now being performed. This means a lot to me, because of how simple and exciting the theatre was and how it still is. 

Here is some of her work that I admired. 

https://archive.org/stream/playsofroswitha00hrotuoft/playsofroswitha00hrotuoft_djvu.txt

viii THE PLAYS OF ROSWITHA 

the time when Laurence Humfrey, an exile from 
England for his religion, learnt to know them in Germany. 
It is now an established fact that the plays are the work 
of a Benedictine nun of Gandersheim, in Saxony, and 
their merits certainly justify her biographer's exclama- 
tion : " Rara avis in Saxonia visa est." 

It used to be assumed that between the 6th and the 
1 2th century all dramatic representations ceased, but 
each of these centuries when patiendy searched has 
yielded some dramatic texts. The feudal period, 
reckoned the most barbarous, and Germania, set down 
then, as later in history, as the least civilized of countries, 
have produced the most considerable and least imperfect 
of these texts in the plays of Hrotsuitha, or Roswitha, 
a nun of the Order of St. Benedict, who spent her 
religious life in the Convent of Gandersheim.