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Prior to the Elizabethan drama traditions of Shakespeare's time were the mystery and morality plays of medieval times. In contrast to the Elizabethan dramatic themes, the medieval plays focused on teaching people the morals that were influenced by the Christian religion and were most often produced and played by religious monks. These early plays were produced in order to help the audience learn the teachings of their religion; these plays were basically dramatized interpretations of stories from the Bible. Mystery plays were popular between the tenth and fifteenth centuries.

At the end of the fifteenth century in England, a new type of play appeared that was less didactic and less serious than themystery play and often contained a bit of humor. This type of play was performed most often at the houses of noblemen and was called an Interlude. Performed during special holidays, Interludes were very simple at first but they evolved over time to include music and dance and, under French influence, farce--an exaggerated form of comedy. John Heywood (c.1497-1580) was one of the more famous of London's playwrights at that time, creating several Interludes, one of which was called The Play of the Wether, a New and Mery Interlude of All Maner of Wethers (1533).

Another type of play also was developed in the early sixteenth century. This was the historic play. John Bale (1495-1563), who also wrote mystery plays and interludes, is often cited as one of the more important first playwrights of history plays. Bale's Kynge Johan (1538) would influence a new direction for other writers, including Shakespeare, who would go on to write his own play, based on the life of King John of England, sometime around 1596.

Humanism--a term applied to the philosophical and intellectual flow of thought that valued the ability of the individual to determine what was truth and what was not--and specifically Renaissance humanism, influenced the stage and its productions in the mid-fifteenth century. Through this influence, dramatists began turning to classical works of Greece and Rome. During this time, writers looked to ancient Greek and Roman dramas as sources of new works, which eventually lead to the birth of English tragedy.

Often accredited as the first English tragedy is Richard Edwards's Damon and Pythias (1564), a play based on a Greek story about the power of strong friendship. This early tragedy did not contain the elements that would later be used by playwrights such as Shakespeare, however. Those elements were brought to English tragedies first by Jasper Heywood (1553-1598) who translated the plays of a classical Roman playwright called Seneca. It was through Seneca's work that elements such as blood and violence, grand rhetorical speeches, and the appearance of ghosts would become part of staged productions, such as is seen in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1599). However, Shakespeare was not the first to write an Elizabethan tragedy. That honor is attributed to two lawyers, Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) and Thomas Norton (1532-1584) who wrote Gorboduc in 1561. This was a play whose message was directed at Elizabeth I, suggesting the importance of her leaving a definite heir to the throne. This was also the first English play to be written in blank verse. The themes and the format of this play are believed to have greatly influenced Shakespeare's later play King Lear (1605).

Queen Elizabeth I supported the arts and viewed many of the staged dramas of her time. Through her encouragement, she helped to create the great contributions that sixteenth and seventeen English dramatists would provide the world--those plays that continue to be enjoyed by twenty-first-century audiences and which are referred to as Elizabethan drama.

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