Renaissance Theatre in Scandinavia

Abstract

Though records of medieval drama in Scandinavia are few and fragmentary, they allow us to trace there a tradition similar to that developing in much of Europe at this time. There are surviving examples of quasi-dramatic church ceremonies at Easter and Christmas, of early liturgical dramas such as the famousQuem quareitis, and of later, more elaborate resurrection plays and mysteries. There is a far greater development of dramatic production in Scandinavia after 1500, however, when the church drama of the middle ages gives way to the school drama of the Renaissance. Throughout northern Europe, the schools served as the centers for the establishment of a new style of drama. But nowhere was school drama so exclusively dominant as in Scandinavia where, in contrast to the rest of Europe, it served as the popular and court theatre of this period as well.