PIctures

 I really like this first picture, its a very medieval portrait of the representation of Adam and Eve and Eve taking an apple from the tree of Knowledge of good and evil. but I mostly enjoy the representation of Satan, he isn't quite a snake but more of a reptile. Though Costume-wise it doesn't leaves much room to decide how to clothe the actors without offending the faint of hearted.

This second picture is an awesome view of how the pageant cars worked, the audience circling around the stage. words can not really describe how intriguing it is to see the re-inactments of these events, so that people of the modern day can witness what the events of the past.








This last picture is my favorite out of all three of my pictures that I've found. the tree that God creates and tells Adam and Eve to not eat from is called the tree of knowledge of life and death (good and evil) and to have the tree made out of a skeleton is just a revolutionary idea, it makes people think more about how this tree was influential, because I believe that people really over look the tree.

ORO

So I did a little more in depth research on York Cycle plays and Oxford Referance Online pointed me to Mystery Plays which I thought was an interesting name choice, since they aren't very mystery like. But they were basically religious plays that were in vernacular (which means the common language, instead of all in Latin). The york plays or mystery plays could also be named Bible-histories as they were all stories right out of the Bible, almost as if they were like educational children's shows on the television set.
Below I've inserted the excerpt from ORO.


Mystery Play,   medieval religious play which derives from liturgical drama, but differs in being wholly or partly in the vernacular and not chanted but spoken. Also it was performed out of doors—in front of the church, in the market square, or on perambulating pageants. The earlier English name for it was miracle play, now seldom used, and a better name would be Bible-histories, since each play was really a cycle of plays based on the Bible, from the Creation to the Second Coming. Substantial texts of English ‘cycles’ of such plays have survived from Chester, Coventry, Lincoln, Wakefield, and York. Simultaneously with the English mystery play there arose in Europe, in the vernacular, the French mystère, the German Mysterienspiel, the Italian sacra rappresentazione, and the Spanish auto sacramental, to name only the most important. Traces of similar plays are found in Russia, in the states of Central Europe, and also in Denmark.

"Mystery Play"  The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre. Ed. Phyllis Hartnoll and Peter Found. Oxford University Press, 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Central Washington University.  8 December 2010  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t79.e2154>

Monograph

Christian humanism in the late English morality plays
By Dorothy H. Brown

This monograph is rather long but let me try to summarize it up for everyone.

Dorothy writes this book to help show how the late morality plays provide an exquisite way to teach ideas of education, religion, politics, and personal morality to a very diverse education. The morality plays had a lot of influence of daily activities to help bring the plays to realism. it also then goes into how from the morality plays the English theatre grew and in what ways.

the link that I have for everyone to follow is:
http://books.google.com/books?id=QH-dfBod0R8C&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Song+in+Morality+Plays+and+Interludes&source=bl&ots=9PmSMUWYVw&sig=9eXWqCZfIgFFhao6zeOfeuDbQTc&hl=en&ei=vf79TNPtLozEsAP8xbGwCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Song%20in%20Morality%20Plays%20and%20Interludes&f=false

This is a Google Book and you should be able to read the whole book.