Medieval Dutch Literature - Drama

Drama

As in most European nations, the religious drama takes a prominent place in a survey of medieval literature in the Low Countries. The earliest existing fragment is part of a Maastricht Passover Play of about 1360. There is also a Holy Sacrament, composed by a certain Smeken at Breda and performed in 1500. In addition to these purely theological dramas there were acted mundane plays and farces, performed outside the churches by semi-religious companies; these curious moralities were known as Abele Spelen ("Worthy Plays") and Sotternien ("Silly Plays"). In these pieces we discover the first traces of that genius for low comedy which was afterwards to take perfect form in the dramas of Bredero and the paintings of Teniers.

As for prose, the oldest pieces of Dutch prose now in existence are charters of towns in Flanders and Zeeland, dated 1249, 1251 and 1254. Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268) was the first known prose writer in the Dutch language, the author of the notable dissertation known as the Seven Ways of Holy Love. From the other Dutch mystics whose writings have reached us, the Brussels friar Jan van Ruusbroec (better known in English as the Blessed John of Ruysbroeck, 1293/4–1381), the "father of Dutch prose" stands out. A prose translation of the Old Testament was made about 1300, and there exists a Life of Jesus of around the same date.

Interesting relics of medieval Dutch narrative, as far as the formation of the language is concerned, are the popular romances in which the romantic stories of the minstrels were translated for the benefit of the unlettered public into simple language.