ABSTRACT
From classical Greek times, and in many other cultures, theatre has maintained strong religious connections. The origins of English theatre are religious too.
Literary representation was, as we have seen, in the hands of monasteries as the guardians and propagators of the written word. From Caedmon onwards, the local language appears in literature and history, although Latin, the language of the English church, whose base in Rome was accepted in England until the 1530s, was the language of documentation. Even the source which contains the account of Caedmon (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History) was written in Latin. King Alfred encouraged the use of the vernacular in the late ninth century, but he made it clear that this was very much second best, necessitated by the deplorably low standards of Latin learning in his kingdom. The growing use of English may also reflect the church’s constant concern over several centuries to reach out to people in the vernacular, which led to a wide number of translations of the Bible, or parts of it.
