This semester we covered many time periods and learned about theater life, playwrights and theater genres which were all very interesting and I learned a lot. There are only two eras that I felt most interested in discussing for my final essay: the medieval period and the Elizabethan period. So I decided to discuss how the theater of the medieval period influenced the theater of the Elizabethan period. I found that Elizabethan theater was heavily influenced by medieval theater in several ways, including: the influence of types of plays, the influence of concepts in different genres, the aspect of performance itself along with staging and to religious and political controversies. Throughout my article I will discuss these influences of the medieval period on the Elizabethan period in more detail. Medieval theater refers to theater in the time period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the beginning of the Renaissance in approximately the 15th century AD medieval theater covers all drama produced in Europe in that thousand year period. English Renaissance theatre, also known as Early Modern English theatre, refers to the English theatre, largely based in London, that occurred between 1567 and 1642. To understand the transition from medieval theater to Elizabethan theater we must first understand medieval theatre.Medieval theater covered a variety of genres including liturgical drama, mystery and morality plays, farces and masques. Medieval dramas for the most part were very religious and moral in themes, staging and traditions. So in turn two of the most important game genres were morality and mystery. Mystery plays were stories from the Bible turned into plays and were highly religious… half paper… they were mobile stages that were often transported through large cities but the size of the stage itself on wagons was very small. Most performances could be seen in cities, in the halls of nobility and in amphitheatres. All medieval theater productions were temporary and had to be moved after the show was over. This differed from the Elizabethan era in the way it presented various actions on stage in time and space and featured a combination of detailed realism, but with the later development of medieval theatre, plays were no longer strictly liturgical. This allowed performers to open audiences' imaginations without fear of religious traditions trapping their minds, so they improved costumes, props, and characters. The Elizabethan era introduced a new way of casting actors for the theater and developed acting companies.