Period pieces: Remnants of mystery drama in Shakespeare

This thesis argues that Shakespeare's stage recuperated but also transformed remnants of medieval mystery drama in the form of props, playhouse architecture, and sound effects. I first contend that, since the early twentieth-century scholarship of E. K. Chambers, our critical perceptions of the mysteries have been shaped by Shakespeare's preeminence. My project proposes that we work around that dilemma by looking to sixteenth-century accounts of England's theatrical heritage. I then argue that the commercial stage itself contains material sites of memory that still resonate for Shakespeare's audience: the ass's head of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the stage trap-door in Hamlet, and the sound of knocking in Macbeth. While addressing points of contact between the mysteries and the commercial stage, my work highlights the startling transformations that the material remnants of mystery drama undergo. In Shakespeare, the ass's head is no longer associated with the Eucharist and other Christian liturgies, but with erotic love. Purgatory is no longer a place of souls, but of revenging ghosts. And the person knocking at the Porter's "Hell Gate" is not Christ, but Scotland's redeemer. Consequently, Shakespeare's stage separates and distinguishes itself from the mysteries even as it recovers its material vestiges.