Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages

Keywords: Keywords: Beauty, Landscape, Music, Nativity, Religious drama, Shepherds.

Medieval nativity plays, in particular those dealing with the adoration of the shepherds, tend to depict two well distinct worlds, namely before and after the characters learn about the birth of the Messiah. English and Castilian playwrights depict the postlapsarian world prior to Jesus’s birth as a gloomy, barren place inhabited by rough ignorant creatures awaiting their redemption. Even if beauty is not staged as such in these plays, it is clear that the characters, due to their moral state, are unable to appreciate the aesthetics of their surroundings. It is the aim of this article to analyse and compare the strategies utilised by the authors in order to stimulate the characters and make beauty somehow apparent to the spectators both in the English and the Castilian traditions. Special attention is paid to the roles played by landscape, language, and music.