The social, political, and economic conditions of the late 15th century in England had a lot of tumultuous. The Second Shepherd’s play revealed this turmoil when poor citizens appeared in the play oppressed by wealthy landowners, they had to work long hours for very few wages because they need money. Also, The Second’s Shepherd Play reflects the social situation of middle-class workers who present this play for political and religious purposes by a local guild who was appeared as a result of the increasing power and prosperity of cities, and in the play, the main characters are middle-class workers talked about their social status in England. Plays in the Middle Ages centered around a religious Bible, and many plays aimed to explore the events of the Old Testament and the New Testament and had educational Biblical to learn the illiterate. This essay is going to discuss The Second Shepherd’s Play as one of the cycles plays and using anachronism in its scenes.
The Second Shepherd’s Play presented in the middle of the streets on the competition’s carts of major cities and the actors moves between several locations in order to change scenes instead of staying in one place as in the modern theater, where moving between the elevated areas called (platea and the locus). These two areas are Mak’s house. In Mak’s house for the farcical actions and where the holy events would occur. The choice of place and the performance of actors in the play has a great impact on the audience, first, because it is a popular audience, therefore the place could be close to them. The performance came in the form of comedy to attract the attention of people, which made them related to the events of the play, which eventually transferred them to the teaching of Christianity.
The Second Shepherd Play is one of the important cycle plays, some characteristics of the cycle play that exists in this play are getting a large audience, speaking the vernacular language not Latin, containing forms of anachronisms, presenting the biblical characters even if they are outside the proper historical.
An anachronism is an inconsistent chronological order in some arrangement of characters, events, or objects in different periods. It is used to consolidate the idea or re-mention, someone, in a time other than his time, but with the plot of the play is not seen this anachronism never clearly. Anachronism is shown clearly in The Second Shepherd’s Play in different examples, the story about the birth of Jesus Christ while it happened in the Middle Ages. This event did not occur in this time, but it has been included at this time to indicate that the birth of Christ is important to all members of society, as if at any time this novel could represent us. Also, the play begins in a comical manner and ends with a Christian template as if it were a religious play, which made it teach people Christianity in an acceptable way to the illiterate audience.
The part which Skipping the shepherds’ real journey, Scene VII opens
with Coll, Gym, and Daw in the stable of Bethlehem, with Mary and Christ. Each one of the three shepherds prepares to present Christ with a gift. This part showed anachronism clearly when the shepherds’ journey from England to Bethlehem omission to imply the trip was short. A trip to Bethlehem on foot would have taken weeks or months. The scene’s exclusion of the shepherds’ journey is reminiscent of the way they play glosses over the shepherds’ journey to Mak’s shack earlier in the play, revealing the first instance of parallelism between the two plotlines. In the two cases, the shepherds brought a gift to Mak’s child, like the shepherds who bring gifts to the Christ child—both instances show the shepherds’ generosity although that they are so poor.
In conclusion, Shepherd’s second play is one of the great plays of the Medieval Ages, which illustrates the relationship between the audience and the characters that have popular tests and liken them, also it is one of the cycles plays that address the largest audience for the purpose of teaching Christian values but in the form of comedy, which made the story has two sides comic and serious, which helped Illiterate in understanding Christian.