Final answer:
In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, plays were categorized by their content, with morality plays teaching lessons through allegorical characters, mystery plays dramatizing biblical events, interludes offering short entertainments, and tropes being liturgical dramas performed within the church.
Step-by-step explanation:
Matching Types of Plays with Their Content
During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, various types of religious dramas flourished, each with its unique characteristics and content. Here's how each type of play matches with its typical content:
- Morality play: Features characters that personify abstract concepts like virtues and vices. The content is focused on delivering moral lessons, illustrating the right and wrong behaviors according to Church doctrine. An example is the play Everyman.
- Mystery play: Includes dramatized events from the Bible, telling stories from Creation to Doomsday. These plays were part of the mystery cycles, often performed during the Feast of Corpus Christi.
- Interludes: These were short dramatic entertainments performed between the courses of a banquet or during some festivity; they could be secular or religious and often contained elements of farce or slapstick comedy.
- Tropes: Originating as embellishments or interpolations within the liturgy, tropes evolved into liturgical dramas, performed within the church, often in Latin, and related to the religious ritual.
The development of these play types from liturgical tropes to street theatre reflects both a change in performance practices—from clergy to laymen—and a geographic shift from churches to public spaces.