The Rhetoric of the Saints in Middle English BibIical Drama

by

Chester N. Scoville

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of English

University of Toronto

O Copyright by Chester N. Scoville (2000)

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Abstract of Thesis for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

2000

Department of English, University of Toronto

The Rhetoric of the Saints in Middle English Biblical Dnma

by Chester N. Scovilie

Much past criticism of character in Middle English drarna has fallen into one of

two rougtily defined positions: either that early drama was to be valued as an example of

burgeoning realism as dernonstrated by its villains and rascals, o r that it was didactic and

stylized, meant primarily to teach doctrine to the faithfùl. This thesis argues, however,

that the pnmary purpose of Middle English biblical plays was neither of these.

This thesis is both an argument for and a demonstration of the proposition that the

saints in Middle English bibiical plays serve as rhetors whose task is to persuade the

audience to see itself as a community of faith. Using concepts fiom classical and medieval

rhetoric, and certain ideas fiom modem reader-response theory, this thesis explores the

methods of characterïzation and persuasion used in portrayals of Thomas the apostle,

Mary Magdalene, Joseph the foster-father of Christ, and Paul the apostle. This series of

case studies shows that the authors of the plays, though aware of the morally arnbiguous

nature of their dramatic and linguistic tools, nonetheless used al1 the means of persuasion

at their disposai to create a compelling, interactive, and affective experience for their

audiences, with the purpose of moving the audience to a position of sympathy and

communion with the saints and with the god they serve.

*.

II

Acknowledgements

This thesis owes thanks to many people. Special thanks, however, go to the following, who have been especiaily kind and supportive over the years:

The members of my cornmittee, Sandy Johnston, David Klausner, and Suzanne Akbari,

The University of Toronto's faculty, especially JoAnna Dutka, Ruth Harvey, David Townsend, George Rigg, Michael Dixon, Brian Corman, and Roberta Frank,

The PLS and associated nff-raff. especially Linda Philiïps, Erik Buchanan, Sara Lawson, Chris Warrilow, Christopher Moore, Michael Curtis, Karen Sawyer, Doug Hayes, and Laurelle LeVert,

Al1 rny fnends who have helped me in tangible and intangible ways, especially Bill Sullivan, Mark Rosenthal, Ali Schmidl, Christine & Bi11 Vogel, and of course Starfinder Stanley,

And most of all, my fiend, partner, and colleague, Kim Yates.

Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 . Saints, Character, and Rhetonc: An Introduction

Chapter 2. Thomas's Doubts and the Parameters of Rhetoric

Chapter 3. Mary Magdalene, Ethos, Decorum, and the Conversion of Language

C hapter 4. Joseph, Pathos, and the Audience's Participation in the Incarnation

Chapter 5. The Conversion of Saint Paul and the Rhetonc of Sainthood

Conclusion

Works Consulted

Chapter I

Saints, Character, and Rhetonc: An Introduction

Saints are among the most powef i l characters in the vemacular drama of late

medieval EngIand. Capable of stirring the audience to devotion, o f exploring the most

difficult aspects of the Christian faith, of being exemplars, expositors, and object lessons,

the saints were among the subtlest and most effective rhetorical and drarnatic vehicles

available to medieval playwrights. Long ignored or underestimated in the critical heritage

of early drama, the saints are nonetheless easily among the most memorable characters t o

those fortunate enough to have seen medieval plays performed, whether one considers the

cranky yet holy Joseph, the tortured Thomas, o r the fiery Paul. This study is intended as a

step towards redressing the balance by attempting to explain why and how the saints are

as powerfûl as they are in performance.

Saints have always been difficult to understand. They, more than any other kind o f

figure, partake both of the life of earthly people and of the life of heavenly bliss; the

Communion of Saints rnay be said t o exist both in the Church Militant and in the Church

Tnumphant at once. Such a d u d existence seems to have been at the h a r t of the cult o f

saints fiom the beginning. The "locdization of the holy" fiom the beginning o f the cult

allowed for both "the facts of distance and [...] the joys of proximity"' that were key to an

incarnational understanding of the divine. In Dives and Palper, we find the following

Peter Brown, The Cuit of the &infs: Its Rise a n d Ft~ttctiott wifhlt~ Latitt Christianity (London: SCM P, 198 1) 86-87.

description of the problem:

Mmagis stondinge in chirchis mai be considered in two wyses, ebir as bei

representen pe state of seintis of whom bei ben ymagis as k i lyuyden in bis

lijf [...] or eUis pei mai be considerid as bei representen pe state of endeles

blisse. [...] Nebeles in al such peinture an onest meen [...] is to be kept, for

seyntis louyden an onest meen in al her lyuyng.'

The question of how such an "onest meen" is to be found and kept is a panicular problem

for a narrative f o m like drama, in which the saints mua be played by real people. The

audience must not be allowed t o forget the saintly nature of the f i e r e before it if the

play's devotional purpose is to be achieved; yet the human side of the saint is not merely

accidental but crucial to the saint's very being. Lt may be said that al1 saints' legends are

the story of Pauper's "onest meen," and that al1 portrayals of them must wrestle with a

method for achieving it. Indeed, the problem that Pauper describes and its implications

underlie the depiction of and response to saints in Middle English biblical drarna.

This m d y does not attempt to reconstruct the lost tradition o f saint plays that

existed in England before the Reforrnation, though such a task needs to be done. What it

wiU attempt is a close reading of four saintly characters--Thomas, M a y Magdalene,

Joseph, and Paul-in some of their manifestations in Middle English biblicai drama, in an

attempt to answer some specific questions: how, exactly, are they portrayed, by what

rneans are they portrayed, what effect are they calculated t o have upon an audience, and

Dives oid Pmtper. Vol. 1, part 1, ed. Priscilla Heath Bamum. EETS o. S. 275 (Oxford: Odord UP, 1976) 94.

3

how do they achieve such an effect? Underlying aii these questions is a more fundamental

question: what kind of perspective is usefiil in fiaming these questions and answers to

them?

Answers to none of these questions are immediately obvious, but the questions

themselves are unavoidable. in the Chester play of the Nativity, for example, the reader or

audience member can sense a number of distinctions between the episodes of Visitation

(Chester 7/49- 120)' and Joseph's Doubt (Chester 7/12 1 - 168). The register of the dialogue

shifis fiom prayerfirl to coarse; the speakers shifi tiom female to male; the form shifis fiom

dialogue to monologue; the central emotion shifis f'iom joy to gloom. An interpreter,

noting al1 of these shifis, might be able to make severai deductions concerning the

theological points being made. Yet such an interpreter would not be able to avoid the fact

that, @ven the absence of a narrator, al1 of those points come fiom the interaction of the

saintly characters on the stage, with each other and with the audience. Furthermore. it is

not clear how those characters may have seemed to the audience, and how the theological

points of the play do or do not interact with the characters and the dramatic form to affect

the audience.

When, seeking answers, one turns to the body of criticism on character and

audience in medieval drama, one is struck by how much of it seems to share a cunous

fascination with the study of characters who are evii, foolish, or otherwise "low." A

3 Throughout this study, citations of plays wili be included in the text, giving a short title, play number, and Iine number. AU citations of the Chester cycle refer to The Chester Mystery Cycle, ed. R.M. Lumiansky and David Mills. Vol. 1, Text, EETS, S.S. 3 (London: Oxford UP, 1974). Vol. 2, Comrnentary and Glossary, EETS, S.S. 9 (London: Oxford UP, 1986).

relatively early (and admittediy peripheral) exarnple of the phenornenon can be seen vividly

in G. R. Owst's Literature and Pu@it in Medievol England- His observations about

character in the drama, ref ldng the attitudes of those scholars who specialized in the

field at the tirne, are ahost entirely given over to viiiains or at least to the vicious. Over

the course of six pages,' he treats Cain, Noah's d e , Herod, Herod's soldiers, Pilate,

Caiaphas, and Annas, along with one very briee seven-line glance at Isaac. He concludes

his sîudy of (mostly) viilainy wit h the statement, " So much, then, for the development of

human character in the miracle-plays."' While this exarnple is extreme, it does reflect a

tendency that persias in the study of c h m e r in medieval biblical drama to this day? It

is, perhaps, telling that the only book by a major scholar on a single character in the drama

remains Arnold Williams's The Characterizatioii of Pllate in the Towrieley Cycle, a book

which argues that the Towneley Pilate's utter lack of sympathy or goodness-the fact that

the character, uniike his parallels, "is bad, aU badW-is "the true drarnatic method" and a

' Owst, Lllerature aiid Ptrlpir in Medieval Englarid, 2* ed (Mord: Blackwell, 1 96 1 ) 49 1-7.

Other examples include Lysander W. Cushman, 7he Devil ond the Vice in EiigfÏsh Drarno~ic Literutwe before Shakespeare (Halle: Niemayer, l9OO), Robert A. Brawer, "The Characterization of Pilate in the York Cycle Play," Studies in Philology 69 ( 1 972) 289-3 03, David Staines, "To Out-Herod Herod: The Development of a Dramatic Character", Comparative Drama 10 ( 1 976) 29-53, Miriam Anne Skey, "Herod the Great in Medieval European Drarna," Comparative Dratna 13 (1979) 330-64, Lawrence M. Clopper, "Tyrants and Viains: Characterization in the Passion Sequences of the English Cycle Plays, " Modern Langrrage Quarterly 4 1 ( 1 980) 3-20, Martin Stevens, "Herod as Carnival King in the Medieval Biblical Drama," Mediaevalia 1 8 ( 1 995) 43-66, Joseph M. Ricke, "Parody, Performance, and the 'Uitimate' Meaning of Noah's Shrew," Medaevalia 18 (1995) 263-282.

sign of artistic excellence.'

Some scholars do not go to that extreme, but in their own way undermine the

possibility of looking at character and audience differently. Although V. A. Kolve, for

instance, writes on the moral compfexity of medieval drarnatic characters in his two

chapters on "natural man,"' and although Rosemary Wooifaddresses issues of typology,

psychology, realism, doctrine, staging, and numerous other factors that affect the portrayal

of character: nonetheless both writers also make various attempts in their arguments to

keep the phenornenon of theatrical and affective response to characters at arms' length.

Kolve might write eloquently about faIIen humanity, but insists nonetheiess that "local,

familiar faces in biblical roles would have made any filly developed kind of theatrical

illusion impo~sible,"~~ thus undercutting the very efficacy of the vivid characterizations he

later describes so weil. Rosemary Woolf too declares, in spite of the complexity of her

own analyses, that in the medieval drama "no use is made of [...] the ability to display

psychological confiicts, development and ambiguities; [. . .] there is no inwardness of

characterization. " "

' Arnold Wdliams, nie Character+=atio~t of Pilate in the Towneley Cycle (East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1950) 16.

* V. A. Kolve, n e Play Caiied C o p s Christi (Princeton: Princeton LIP, 1966) 206- 265.

Rosemary Woolf, The Englsh Mystery Piays (Berkeley: U of California P, 1973) passim.

'O Kolve, Piizy Caiied Corpis Christi 24.

" Woolf, Engiish Mystery Piays 98.

Even when modem scholars address saintiy characters, one can often sense a

hesitancy to integrate their human qualities with their holy qualities. For example, Joseph

is one of the most cornmonly represented characters in Middle English drama, and also in

its criticism; he appears in multiple pageants in al1 four complete English cycles, in the

Coventry plays, and in the Digby Kifhg of the Chiluken; a h , much has been written on

him, and on his role within the plays, by modem scholars. C. Philip Deasy7s dissertation,

later published in book form,lZ was an early attempt to trace Joseph's cult and history;

V. A. Kolve repeats Deasy7s conclusions and, noting the uniquely late history of Joseph's

cult, notes as weU as the uniquely ambiguous role that resulted 6om it." Since Kolve,

several other studies have appeared that detail Joseph's history, role, and character.

Nearly al1 of these studies focus on the contrast between senex amans and flawed saint

that Kolve so dearly articulated, and which indeed is centrai to any understanding of the

character." Yet none of these studies fully addresses a key problem: what relationship, if

" C. Philip Deasy, Saint Joseph if? the Engkh Mystery Plays (Washington, DC: Catholic UP, 1937).

l 3 Kolve, Play C d e d C o p t s Christi 247-25 3.

" For instance, Joseph L. Baird and Lorrayne Y. Baird, "Fabliau Form and the Hegge Josephk Retum," Chcnrcer Review 8.2 (1 973) 159- 169; Gai1 McMurray Gibson, "'Porta Haec Clausa Erit.' Comedy, Conception, and Ezekiel's Closed Door in the Ludks Coventriae Play of 'Joseph's Retum', " Jmnrui of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 ( 1 978) 13 7- 1 57; Gai1 McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: Easr Angiimr h a mrd Society in the Lute Mid ie Ages (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) 1 54- 1 66; J. W. Robinson, "A Commentary on the York Play of the Birth of Jesus," Jorrnd of E~rgiish mrd Germanie Philology 70.2 (April 197 1 ) 24 1-254; Martin W. Walsh, "Divine Cuckold/Holy Fool: The Comic Image of Joseph in the English Troubles' Play," in England in the Fourteenth Centwy: Proceedings of the 1985 Harfaxton Symposium, ed. W.M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, Suffok: BoydeU P, 1986) 278-297.

any, does this character have with the audience, and as Kolve says, it is in good

characters like hirn that medieval drama has its "strongest c l a h [...] to Our attention and

~ympathy,"'~ then what literary devices do the medieval playwrights use to make such

characters sympathetic?

One question seems to have fiamed much discussion of character in early drama:

are the characters in medieval drama primarily to be seen as realistic, or are they to be seen

primarily as stylized types? Older scholars such as Owst would seem to argue that the

low, comical, and villainous characters are examples of a kind of burgeoning reaiism;

Chambers, in particular, stresses the comic in the growth of that quality.16 Following the

lead, in later decades, of Kolve and Woolf, one rnight conclude that the converse is also

true: that the high, serious, and saintly characters are stytized and not affective in their

function.

The problem with this distinction is that it is a fdse one. Characters in literature

are never whoily realistic, and rarely are they merely stock types; they instead partake of

both categories. Northrop Frye writes,

[Tlhe sentimental notion of an antithesis between the lifelike character and

the stock type is a vulgar error. All lifelike characters, whether in drama or

in fiction, owe their consistency to the appropriateness of the stock type

which belongs to their dramatic function. That stock type is not the

l 5 Kolve, PIqv CaIIed Corpus Christi 23 7.

l6 E.K. Chambers, The Mediamal Stage (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1 903; reprinted Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996) Vol. 2,209.

8

character but it is as necessary to the character as a skeleton is to the actor

who plays it."

Some ideas about the historicd reasons behind this "vulgar error" have been postulated in

the past. Stanley Kahri notes tartly, "More even than the comedy does the violence of

medieval drama appeal to the critic whose standard of what is good has been set by

Ib~en ." '~ Perhaps there is. as he implies, an unconscious bias towards nineteenth-centuq

realism that has guided much of our scholarship towards regarding evil or coarse

characters as the most real, and therefore the most vivid, colourfùl, and exciting in the

drama. Even in the late 1990's, one can read the argument that in the Dieby Corrversioti

of Saim Paul, for example, the devils Belial and Mercury may be so compelling that they

c m actually "mislead the audience spirit~ally,"'~ despite Belid's unarnbiguous introduction

of himself as "lie myne prynce of Be partys infernail" (4 13).1° Eleanor Prosser puts the

problem this way:

The classification of [...] coarseness as realism is the result of faulty

definition. Because the realistic drarna and novel [. . .] usudly treated the

" Northrop Frye, A~taromy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957) 17 1 - 1 72

'' Stanley J. Kahrl, Traditiotrs of Medirvaf Engfish Drama (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1975) 94.

l9 Heather Hill-Vaquez, "The Possibilities of Performance: A Reformation Sponsorship for the Digby Corrversiorr of Saint P d , " R E D Newsfetter vol. 22, 1 (1 997) 6.

" Quotations of the Digby plays are from The Lare Medirval Refigious Plays of Bodleian MSS. Digby 133 and e Mrrseo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall Jt., EETS O.S. 283 (London: Odord UP, 1982).

festering wounds of society in a realistic mariner, it has become quite

natural to class any presence of the more unpiemant façts of Iife as

Nrefistic. ""

Yet sordidness is not equal to realism, and r d s m is not equal to affectivity. Sordidness

and realism may be used as elements in an emotionaiiy powerfùl portrayal of a character or

situation, as in the York Cmcrfurzot~ play, but they do not Quarantee affective power on

their own.

A related view of character and audience takes into account Brechtian ideas of

alienation and empathy. While many of Brecht's theories and practises are usefiil to

consider when describing medieval cirama, their application can cause contiision when one

considers the question of afféctivity in the audience." Empathy, or Ei~@Izmg, was a

phenornenon that Brecht associated with "Aristotelian" theatre, and cpposed to his new

"epic" theatre, which would do without it. For Brecht, Einfiihlzutg, or "the 'identification'

of the spectator with the playVwLI is essentially a passive operation that prevents thought

and action. Yet its English translation, empthy, "is routinely used to refer to two

" El eanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the EttgIish Mystery Plqs: A Re- Evaltcatiorr ( S t d o r d : S t d o r d UP, 196 1).

" For instance, David Mills, "Characterisation in the English Mystery Plays: A Critical Prologue," Medievaf EtzgIish 73earre 5 (1985): 5-1 7; Garrett P.J. Epp, "Visible Words: The York Plays, Brecht, and Gestic Writing," Comparative Drma 24.4 (Winter 1990- 199 1) 289-305; Martin Stevens, "Illusion and Reality in the Medieval Drarna," College E~tg/ish 3 2.4 (January 197 1) 448-464; Sarah Carpenter, "Morality-Play Characters," Medieval EngIish Theahe 5 ( 1 983 ) t 8-2 8.

Benolt Brecht, "The Gennan Drama: Pre-Hitler," Brecht on meatre, ed. and t r a m John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964) 78.

distinctively separate phenomena, cognitive role taking and affective reactivity to

others. "" These phenomena are not unrelated, but they are not the same. Unfominately,

the term empathy, as well as Our conception of what it describes, "carries a surplus of

meaning, being routinely used to characterize phenomena both cognitive and affective,

both active and passive."^ Such a surplus is refiected in Brecht's own theoretical

conhion of the term, and rnay be the reason why he never actudly established a coherent

theory of what empathy is. On one hand, he is capable of speaking of "the passive

empathy of the ~pectator,"'~ on the other, he refers to it as the attempt to "identiw oneself

with our ~ o r l d , " ~ surely a conscious and active (though not necessarily rational) activity.

Often he conflates the two concepts, as when he speaks of "the audience [...] simply

identifjing itself with the characters in the play,"" as if such an act were simple rather than

a compIex feat of imagination.

In order to combat rhis supposedly passive operation, Brecht introduced a number

of non-illusionistic effects into his plays; such "Alienation Effects" were designed to

present the characters

quite coldly, classically and objectively. For they are not matter for

" Mark H. Davis, Empathy: A Sociai Psychologica/ Approach (Madison, Wi: Brown & Benchmark, 1994) 9.

Davis, Entpathy 10.

' 6 Brecht, "Indirect Impact of the Epic Theatre," Brecht 011 7hearre 57.

" Brecht, "Last Stage: Oedipus," Brecht on Theatre 25.

'"recht, "The Gennan Drama: Pre-Hitler," Brecht on Theatre 78.

empathy; they are there to be understood. Feelings are private and limited.

Againa that the reason is fairly mmprehensive and to be relied on."

Noting that the medieval playwrights aiso did not rely on illusion per se, one might

conciude that the characters in medievai drama are not matter for empathy but for reason,

and that the doctrinal purpose of the plays is in fact sewed by lack of empathy."

One might be Ied to think, d e r perusal of the totality of these factors in the cnticai

heritage, that the plays centred upon coloufil and realistic villains and rogues, as they are

the characters most often written about by critics, and that Christ, the patriarchs, and the

saints (except for the bumbiing Joseph, who has a foot in both camps) must be, by default,

stylized, flat, and uninteresting-mere conveyers of conventional doctrine. Yet such a view

is quite out of step with the modem view of medievai drama as a whole, and with that of a

number of recent critics on the subject of ~haracter:~' that, in addition to their undeniable

entertainment value, the plays had a serious and criticai fùnction as didactic and devotional

" Brecht, "Conversation with Bert Brecht," Brechr mt 7hearre 15.

David Mills, for instance, argues that the Chester cycle "holds its material at a contemplative distance," in a manner uniike "the sometimes urgent demands for empathetic response made by York and Towneley." "The Chester Cycle," Thr Cornbridge Compuniotl io Medievai E,tglish Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 109. As I hope to show, the word "empathetic" is not quite right when applied to the characters of those other cycles.

" See, for instance, Clifford Davidson, "Nonhem Spirituality and the Late Medieval Drama of York," Ine Spirif~~afity of Wesrenl Christendom, ed. E. R. Elder (Kalamazoo: Ciaercian Publications, 1976), esp. 129, 133-136, and 144-1 5 1, on the importance of emotionai reaction to the virtuous characters in medieval plays; see also Alexandra F. Johnston, "Acting Mary: The Emotional Realism of the Mature Virgin in the N-Town Plays," From Page fo Performance: Essays in Eatiy English Drama, ed. John Al ford (East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1995) 85-98.

forces that taught faith and WNe and unified communities." Such would appear t o have

been the case in actuality. What evidence we have of the viewing of medievd plays,

sparse as it is, suggests strongly that in the vernacular drama the characters, good no less

than bad, were indeed convincing, moving, and powerfiil figures in the eyes of

contemporary audience^.^'

If this view of late medievai drama is accurate, then a question by Augustine

becomes pertinent:

That [preachers of fdsehood], pushing and propelling their listeners' minds

towards error, would speak so as to inspire fear, sadness, and elation, and

issue passionate exhortations, while we, in the narne of the truth, c m only

idle dong sounding du11 and indifferent. Who could be so senseless as to

find this sensible?%

If indeed the plays are part of the devotional work and experience of a Christian

comrnunity, and if we indeed recognize them as such, then our criticism of the plays must

'' Such recent works as Gai1 McMurray Gibson's The nteafer of Devotiotc Earr Alrglinrt Drama artd Society in the Late Mialdie Ages (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989) and Eamon D u w s irne Shippirlg of the Aitms: Traditiotrai Religiort irr Ertglmtd 1400- 1580 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992) have shed new Iight on the importance of emotion and paragons of good in late medieval English culture and art.

" See John R. Elliott, Jr., "Medieval Acting, " Corttexts for EÙriy Er~glish Drama. ed. Marianne G. Briscoe and John C. Coldewey (l3loomington: Indiana UP, 1989) 238-25 1.

" "Illi animos audientium in errorem moventes impellentesque dicendo terreant contristent exhilarent exhortentur ardenter, isti pro veritate lenti fngidique donnitent. Quis ita desipiat ut hoc sapiat?" De doctriruz chrisfiarla, ed. and tram R.P.H- Green (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1995) iv.ii.3, 198- 199.

also complete its recognition of the saints as centrai, vibrant, powerf'ul and interesting-in

short, as effective movers of the spirit as well as conveyers of doctrine3'-and develop its

critical vocabulary for saying so analytically.

Thomas Patrick Murphy, in his doctoral dissertation, wrestles with some of these

problems; his solution, however, is less than satisfjing. He argues that the primary unit of

character in medievai drama is not the individuai figure but the interrelation~hip.~ His

thesis abounds with such composite characters as " Joseph-Mary" and " Simeon- Anna; ""

while he does not deny that individual characters do develop and exhibit specific traits, his

essential argument renders any single character in~omplete.~' His attention to the larger

"drainatic societies"" of the plays and to staginy practises are closely tied to his

perception of the irnponance of "the communal person,"" corpus Christi, of much

medieval theology; thus it would seem that he mi@t also address the effect of the plays

'' Some recent studies have moved significantly in this direction, such as Johnston's "Acting Mary," and, tiom a different point of view, Doma Smith Vinter's "Didactic Characterization: the Towneley Abraham," Comparative D m a 14 ( 1980).

" Thomas Patrick Murphy, "The Characters Cailed Corpus C h a i : Dramatic Characterization in the English Mystery Cycles," diss., Ohio State U, 1975.

" Murphy, "Characters, " 62,64.

'' See also Meg Twycross, "The Theatricaiity of Medieval English Plays," Cmbridge Compar~iort 44, and William F. Munson, "Holiday, Audience Participation, and C haract erization in the S hep herds' Plays, " Research Opport~mities irr Rerraissattce Drama 1 5 - 16 (1 972- 1 973) 97- 1 1 5, Munson, "Audience and Meaning in Two Medievd Dramatic Realisms, " The Dramu of the Miciaïe Ages, ed. Clifford Davidson, C.J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (New York: AMS P, 1982) 183-206.

39 Murphy, "Characters," 125.

" Murphy, "Characters," 1 28.

upon the actual society of the audience. But he shies away fiom depending "too heavily

on the hypothetical effect o f a play,"4' preferring to focus on pure structure and giving up

the possibility of understanding what a medieval audience's experience might have been

like. But surely, to do so is to miss the very point of the plays, which had pietistic

hnctions that should be explored, however imperfectly, by modem scholarship.

In attempting to undertake suçh an exploration, one can do worse than to listen to

Cicero's advice fiom De inventione: "The narrative will be plausible [. . .] if the a o q fits in

with the nature of the actors in it, the habits of ordinary people and the beliefs of the

audience."" If the good characters do not appear as convincing or powerfùl to modem

eyes as the bad, then perhaps it is because modem expectations, conventions, and

communicative structures and techniques are simply different fiom those of t he medieval

period.

Furthemore, if communicative techniques and structures may be defined. in

literature, as "the rhetorical resources available to the writer [...] as he tried, conscioudy

or unconsciously, to impose his fictional world on the reader,"" then we must pay special

attention to those techniques and structures, since it is precisely the world that the

characters inhabit that is irnposed upon the reader or audience. There is no necessary

" Murphy, "Characters," 16.

42 "Probabilis erit narratio [...] si res et ad eomm qui agent naturam et ad vulgi morem et ad eomm qui audient opinionem accornmodabitur." Cicero, De inventio~re, ed. and tram H.M. Hubbell. Loeb Classical Library 386 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard W, 1949) i.xxi.30, 60-61.

... '' Wayne C. Booth, ?he Rheforic of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1983) X111.

tension between the two ideas of afFêctivity and formai structure, however; structure is

merely the artiats attempt to order reality in a way that communicates. Underlying alJ

attempts to communicate, moreover, is a rhetoric or rhetorics, and it is these which the

present study must attempt to describe.

It is likely that medieval playwrights thought of their own craft as a rhetoricd act.

It scarceiy needs repetition by now that defenders of medievai bibiical plays seem to have

used the tradition of depicting the holy by means of the concrete as an analogy to the

function of plays--in particular, that audiences "seinge the passioun of Crist and of his

seintis, ben movyd to compassion and devocion" and that such matters "ben holden in

mennes mind" by the dramatic expenence." As vemacular plays gained popularity, the

importance of the imase in the late medieval veneration of the saints was replacing the

importance of the relic in much popular de~ot ion.~ ' Yet paradoxically, rather than making

the devotionai experience less vivid, the practise in many ways made it more so, by

functioning "as a mnemonic device which existentially brings the sou1 into tune with the

reality of the scene."" Such a representational approach to devotion is rhetoncal in its

attitude toward memory, the audience, and the use of signs, and, given the importance of

A Trefise of Miraclis Pleyinge, ed. Clifford Davidsen. Early An, Drama, and Music Monograph Series 19 (Kalamazoo: Medievai Institute, 1 993) 98. But see Lawrence M. Clopper, "Commwritas: The Play of Saints in Late Medievd England" (Mediaevalia 18 ( 1995) 8 1 - 1 10 and Lawrence M. Clopper, tlMiracrda and The Tretise of M~raclis Pieyinge, " Specufum 65 -4 (October 1 990) 878-905, for an important cuveat regarding the nature of such "miraclis."

" Dum, Stripping of the Alfars 167.

Clifford Davidson, "Introduction," Tretise of Miracclis Pleyhge 24.

rhetoric in the Literature of the Middle Ages, it perhaps should not surprise us that

referring to such an approach might have been thought respectable enough for an

orthodox defence of the plays-

One of the very purposes of rhetoric, indeed, is to move the audience. Augustine

declares, borrowing fiom Cicero, that "the eloquent should speak in such a way as to

instruct, delight, and m~ve ."~ ' Augustine declares also that a rnember of the audience may

be persuaded if , among other things, he "pities those whom by your words you present to

his mind's eye [lit. his eyes] as mi~erable."~' For Augustine, however, the process of

bringing anything before the eyes o f a listener is not one of evocation but one of

rerninding;" nor is such a viewpoint unique to him. Throughout the Middle Ages, texts

were seen to have mnemonic fbnctions, reminding the readers (or listeners) of redities

already present in their minds and in the universe around them. When speakuig of

characters, such a point of view leads to an emphasis on portraiture:

As portrait [...] the mental image calls to mind someone who, by definition,

is not present; its fiinction in such circumstances is to remind or recollect to

us its original. As picture, the formal characteristics of the image itself are

dl-important; as portrait, its recollective or heunsticfirrzctiort is paramount

" "ita dicere debere eloquentem ut docent, ut delectet, ut flectat." De âàcîrina Christimta iv.xii.27, 228-229.

" "rnisereatur eorum quos miserandos ante oculos dicendo constituis." De doctrina Christiana i.wi.27, 228-229.

" James J. Murphy, Rhetoric $1 the Midde Ages: A Histoty of Rhrtorical ïheory from 3. Atigz~stine tu the Ret~ais.smice (Berkeley: U of California P, 1974) 289.

If the portraits of the characters on the page seem less than realistic to modem eyes, we

must remember not only that they are merely the blueprints for a performance, but also

that the performance itself is in a sense a blueprint for the final depidon of the characters,

which take place in the audience's rninds. A total picture, built up by syrnpathy and urged

by the rhetorical ans of the playwright, creates the characters; tùrthermore, those sarne

techniques allow the audience to be engaged emotionally with the characters without

identifjing with them per se. Thus, the rhetorical arts and the syrnpathy of the audience

converge to give the audience a powerfuliy affective experience, but one in which they

may still consider the state of their own souk in relationship to the saints that they see and

the Christ whom the saints imitate?'

This point of Mew can help explain numerous otherwise puzzling aspects of

Middle English drama. For instance, it can make sense of what happens when an audience

must deal with characters played by multiple actors in multiple pageants. Some critics

have argued that we must view the characters in processional drama as beginning with a

blank date with every new pageant. Prosser, for instance, argues that "in the busy streets

Mary C a m t hers, The Book of Memory: A SII@ of Memory in Medieval Cuhre. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge 1-rP, 1990) 24.

For a medievai writer or audience member, the act of interpretation and the act of changing one's life accordingly would not necessarily have been separate. For instance, Gregory the Great in his Moraiia in Job States, "We ought to transforrn what we read into our very selves, so that when Our mind is s h e d by that it hears, our Life may concur by practising what has been heard." T r a m Carruthers, Book of Mernory 164. "In nobismetispis namque debemus transfomare quod Iegimus; ut cum per auditum se animus excitat, ad operandum quod audierit vita concurrat ." J-P. Migne, ed. Patrologiu Latina (Paris, 1849) 75.542.

18

of York, the interval between plays was a total break. [...] The Joseph of Joseph's Trouble

About Mary is not the same character as the Joseph in the FZight imo Egypr."J2 Such a

view supposes that an audience is capable of forgetting, not only everything they already

knew about the character, but also everything they saw half an hour before. On the

contrary, the impressions made by the character's earlier portrayai must firnctionally affect

the audience's perception of the Iater portrayal, whether the playwrights were the same

person or not.

Another problem, that of the apparently random swkhes of motivation that have

been observed in medieval dramatic characters, becomes less of a problem when viewed in

this light. Mills argues that in Middle English drama, a character like Noah is capable of

being "two people" but not one person with two sides to his personality, and that the

dramatists created characters with a "lack of verisirnilar complexity," achievino only the

"illusion of psychological cons i s t en~y"~~ rather than the real thing. But it is m l e a r what

"reai" psychological consistency would be considering that we are talking about Jramaiis

persotlae anyway, whose totai personalities exist only as interpretive impressions in the

minds of the audience.

Finally, such an audience-based point of view can help to reconcile the apparent

artificiality of many of the plays' methods with their undeniable affective power. When

rhetorical techniques have in the past been studied in comection with the plays, such

" David Mills, "Religious Drarna and Civic Ceremonid," me Revels History of Dramu in Ellglish, ed. A. C. Cawley et al., vol. 1, Medieval Drama (London: Methuen, 1983) 187.

19

techniques have sometimes been taken as evidence for the play's emotional cddness. For

instance, GeofEey of Vinsauf advises on delivery, "Imitate genuine fÙry, but do not be

furious. [. . .] let your voice represent his voice; your facial expression, his own; and your

gesture his gesture-by recoghble signs."" David Mills, extrapolating Geofiey's advice

for orators and applying it to medieval actors, sees in such advice a "duaiism between

int emaiised individuality and extemal characteristics. "" Y et surely Geofiey's advice on

deIivery is not so extreme as that; it seems merely to be by way of telling the orator not to

lose control and overact. In addition, the reference to "signs" is simply pragmatic. To the

audience, "signs" are al1 that are available anyway; it is in the audience's minds that the

signs must be interpreted to forrn a total impression, and to use that impression to fùlfil the

80aIs of the discourse--in Christian discourse, to reinforce the community of the audience

in its faith.

It is a basic premise of such an audience-based point of view that the medieval

audience that was to be taught, delighted, and moved by the plays was not considered a

passive but an active or rheforicai atidkwce: "Properly speaking, a rhetorical audience

consist) only of those persons who are capable of being iduenced by discoune and of

being mediators of change."% That is, the audience was considered to be intelligent,

5' "Veros imitare fbrores./Non tamen est0 fùrens [...]/Vox vocem, vultus vultum, gestusque figuret/Gestum, per notulas." Poetria nova 2053-2059- Gallo, Poetria nova 124; Nims, Poefria nova 90.

s5 Mills, "Characterisation," 6.

' 6 Lloyd Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation, " Phiiosophy m>d Rhr foric 1 (January 1 968) 8.

critical, and capable of leaniing and of moral decision-making. Such a point of view is

entirely in line with

the Augustinian view that a piece of conventionai signage [...] is merely

intended to remid the hearer of an existing process, and to start it under

way in the hearer's mind so that the hearer wiil himselfcarry his own rnind

dong to a desired objective. [. . .] This whole congeries of ideas [. -. 1 places

a great stress upon individual judgement. It encourages pnvate

interpretation of messages received. It states flatly that rhetors do not

persuade, but that hearers move themselves; that teachers do not teach, but

instead that learners

The rhetorical audience underlying the plays may be seen, to some extent, as the impfied

midietice, an extension of Iser's i m p l i e d d e r . This reader or audience is "a textual

structure anticipating the presence of a recipient;"" it is a characteristic of the text itself

For Iser, "the real reader is always offered a role to play,"5g and, crucially, "there are two

" Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages 288-9. This seems to me a somewhat different process, however, fiom what Stanley Fish describes in Serf-Const~rning Artifacts: The Grperience ojSevenfeenth<entt~v Liieramre (Berkeley: U of California P, 1972), in which he asserts that -'rhetoric" (by which he means sophistry: Fish, SelfCmuming Artifats 1) serves to remind readers or hearers ofwhat they already know; following Plato in the Phaedrt~s, he refers specificaily to earthly rather than mystical knowledge ("to irnrnure the rnind even more firmly in its earthly prison," Fish, Self-Conming Artlyacts 2 l), whereas what Murphy describes in Augustine is, precisely, a mystical vision gained through an audience's response to a rhetor.

'' Wol fgang Iser, n e Act of Reodiig: A Aeory of Aesthetic Respottse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978) 34.

59 Iser, Act of Re&g 34.

21

selves [...] the roie offered by the text and the reader's own disposition,"" which exin in a

constant and dynamic tension. This tension, as we wiii see, is played out in numerous

ways in medieval drarna: the audience is often asked to choose between confiicting rotes;

it is sometimes guideci physically as weiî as mentaiiy around the playing space; its

undemanding of its own place in sacred history is challenged and reinf~rced.~' An

example of such a process may be found in the Smiths' play of the Temptatiort of Christ

fiom the York Cycle.

Here we have a play that not only is obviously rbetoncd in its action, as Jesus and

Diabolus engage in a verbal battle of wits, but also shows two diffenng points of view

regarding the audience. Diabolus, not surprisingly, holds the audience in contempt,

muscling them out of his way with his initial entrance, refemng to them as "al1 Pis prang"

(York 2 ~ / 2 ) , ~ ' and wishing, "hi@ myght sou hangmght with a rope" (York 22/34)

Moreover, his contempt extends into his view of their Mlen and helpless nature. and of

their ability to manipulate discourse, declaring,

1 haue ordayned so barn forne

None may pame fende,

Iser, Acf o/ Reading 3 7 .

6' See Peter W. Travis. "Atfective Criticism, the Pilgrimage of Reading, and English Li terature," Medieval Tems and Contemprary Readers, ed. Laune A.

Medieval Finke and

Martin B. Shichtman (Ithaca, NY: Comell UP, 1987) 20 1-2 15, which proposes a Iaussian reading to show that similar shifis occur during the Towneley Cnrcrfixiort play, and that the audience is meant to take experience of the play and modie their own lives aflerwards.

62 References to the York Cycle are to The York Piqys, ed. Richard Beadle, York Medieval Texts. 2nd ser. (London: Edward Arnold, 1982).

Dat fio al1 likying ar they lorne

Withowten ende.

And nowe sum men spekis of a swayne,

Howe he schd corne and suf ie pape

And with his dede to blisse agayne

bei schulde be bought,

But certis bis tale is but a trayne,

1 trowe it no3t (York 22/15-24).

Such is the Devil's view of humanity, and therefore of the audience: helpless, unable to

speak sense, able therefore only to be passive spectators and victims.

Christ, on the other hand, shows a different (and obviously preferable) point of

view, as he concludes the play by saying,

For ouerecome s c h d bei no3t be

Bot yf pay will

My blissing haue bei with my hande

bat with swike greffe is n03t grucchand,

And also bat will stiffely stande

Agaynste Be fende (York 22.197-8,205-8).

Even though goodness is expressed as stillness rather than as motion," nonetheless

stillness does not equd passivity; on the contrary, as Christ indicates, it means a

wiiiingness and abïiity to "Etiffely stande" against attack, not to gîve ground, to endure-in

short, to act and to be capable o f action. That is the point of view of the York Christ, and

indeed of the York Cycle in general. As this study will indicate, it is also the point of view

of medieval Engiish drama as a whole.

But in addition to the implied audience, the historical audiences of medieval plays

are not entirely unknown to us. For one, we know that, as late medieval English people,

they were Christians--not recent converts but members of a society in which the church

pervaded ali aspects of life. We also lcnow to a great extent what the pietistic fashions and

practises were at the time of the plays' gerforrning history. Analogka1 evidence on the

nature of late medievd piety cornes fkom many sources. For instance, Nicholas Love's

hfirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Chrisr, a widely read and influentid translation of the

Pseudo-Bonaventurian Meditariones vitae Christi, l a d s the reader in deeply affective

contemplation of Biblical characters and events:

Now lat vs here go with hem by deuout contemplation, & help we to bere

bat blessed birben pe child Jesus in oure soule by deuoucion. [. . .] In Pis

manere ben Pei beryng & bryngyng be child Jesus, in to Jetusalem, & be

63 See Alexandra F. Johnston. "The Word Made Flesh: Augustinian Elements in the York Cycle," The Cenire and Its Corn-: Sludies in Medievai Litetafute in Hmor of Professor John Leyerie, ed. Robert A. Taylor et ai., Studies in Medievai Culture 33 (Kalamazoo: Medieval institute, 1 993) 225-246.

lord o f temple in to temple of godea

This typical passage not only is cdculated in its detaiIs to arouse the emotions of its

reader, but also suggests a parallel between the reader's contemplation of the scene and

the actions of the figures portrayed therein. Yet it is to be noted that the reader is not to

identifi with the characters per se, not to lose himseif as Brecht feared, but to have an

experience analogous to that of the figures of contemplation, and thus to enter into a

sacred comrnunity with those figures.

Such a process is also familiar to a reader of Margesr Kempe, who tells about one

such mystical experience of hers:

And ban went Be creatur forth wyth owyr Lady to Bedlem & purchasyd hir

herborwe euery nyght wyth gret reuerens, & owyr Lady was receyued

wyth @ad cher. [.. .] And sythen sche beggyd mete for owyr Lady & hir

blyssyd chyld. Aftyrward sche swathyd hym wyth byîtyr teerys of

compassyon, hauyng mend of pe scharp deth bat he schuld s u Q r for De

lofe of synful men?'

Here, hlargery Kempe imagines herself, as herself, into the scene. It is true that Margesr

Kempe was and remains a controversial figure, but it is also true that the controversy in

her own time appears to have been over the sincerity of her affective responses, not the

fact of them. Margery Kempe's emotional responses differed in intensity from those of her

a Nichoh Love 'r Mirror of the Blessed Lije of Jeszts Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland, 1992) 47.

The Book of Margry Kempe, ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS O.S. 2 12 (London: Oxford UP, 1940) 19.

neighbours, but not in type?

One word that Margery Kempe uses to describe her feelings is particularly

revealing: "compassyon." Simiiarly, the tenns used by Nicholas Love, such as "bebenk be

& haue in mynde be grete pouert of hife [.. .] here of mich owht we to haue compassion, &

be stired to be loue of vertuous pouerte,"" suggest that the emotionai reaction that is

being sought-that which underlay much of late medieval piety-is not empathy but

sympathy, or Mitjiihfztng. The difference between Ei~flihiurrg and Mirfiihhrrzg is subtle

but definite:

Mit in this context must be translated as "dong with" [...] A sympathetic

person feels afong wifh another person but not necessarily irllo a person.

[. . .] Empathic behaviour implies a convergence of behaviour. Sympathetic

behaviour implies a parallelism in the behaviour of two individuais, a

Mitjiihftorg rat her t han an EirIfi2hi11irg. ."

It makes some sense to think of the audience's reaction to medieval plays as sympathetic

66 See Eamon Duws comments on Margery Kempe in Tne Snipping of the Altars, esp. 20 and 261.

67 Love, Mirror 3 2-33. See also A Book of Showings fo the Anchuress 31iIiu11 of Nonvich, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1 W8), Vol. 1, 20 1 -202. "Me thought 1 wolde haue bene that tyme with Mary Mawdeleyne and with othere that were Crystes loverse, that I myght have sene bodylye the passiorni of oure lorde that he sufferede for me, that 1 myght have sufferede with hym as othere dyd that lovyd hym, not withstandynge that 1 leevyd sadlye alle the peynes of Cryste as hdye kyrke schewys and techeys, arÉd also the payntyngys of crucyfexes that er made be the grace of god aftere the techynge of haly kyrke to the lyknes of Crystes passyom, als farfùrthe as man ys witte maye reche."

" Arnold Buchheimer, "The Developrnent of Ideas About Empathy," Jotrmf of Cowtsehg Psychofogy 10.1 (1963) 63 .

rather than empathetic; Jauss describes such a reaction, in facf as "a primary level of the

lyrical experience" in certain instances:

Identification here is not with a person (who may even be unloved) but

comes fiom the readiness to put oneself in the same situation- [...] [Wlhat

is being looked for is not the identity of the person but a significant

anaiogy.

A reader's imagining hirnself as Christ or the Virgin, or as a saint, is in a sense not hlfilling

the task of his own salvation. The Christian has been saved by the sacrifice of Christ, but

must work through the implications of that fact in the course of his individual life. Thus,

while it may be usehl to feel dong with Christ or the Virgin, and indeed to imitate them, it

is of less use to try to converge with the~n. '~

Furthemore, we know that the audiences that experienced these plays did so as an

exercise in both religion and community: as the York A N Memorandum Book declares,

its city's plays were "in honour and reverence of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the glory

and benefit of the same city;"" the Chester Proclamation of 153 1-2 says, sirnilarly, that its

" Ham Robert Jauss, Aesthetic Experience mtd Literary Henneweutics, tram. Michael Shaw. Theory and History of Literature 3 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982) 162.

'O Mark Stefan Harnan comes to the similar conclusion that the York playwright wishes the audience "to see the limited characters as specific embodiments of a cornmon human inadequacy." "The Introspective and Egocentnc Quests of Character and Audience: Modes of Self-Definition in the York Corpus Christi Cycle and in Chaucer's 'Merchant's Tale'," diss., U of Rochester, 1982, vi. See also Laurelle Marie LeVert's study of Love and Kempe, "The Rhetoric of Response: Anêctivity and Didacticism in Middle English Devotional Expenences of the Passion," diss., U of Toronto, t 999.

" "en honour & reuerence nostreseignour Iesu Crin & honour & profitt de mesme la Citee." RecorciS of Earî'y EngIish Drama: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret

27

piays were "not only for the Augmentation & incres <...> faith of oc...> suyour iesu Crist

& to exort the myndes of the common people <. ..> doctryne th<.. .>f but also for the

commenwelth & prosperitie of this Citie."" Nor is the prospenty mentioned in both

records of a purely or even primarily econornic son: "the value of cooperation and

mutuality in seeking salvatiod"' underlies manifold activities in àties, toms, and parishes

in the late Middle Ages, and, given the corporate nature of the drama, may be reasonably

assumed to underlie it as well. The comrnunity was important not only in providing the

material means for producing the plays, but also in ensuring that an individual audience

member's response to the plays should remain oxthodox; late medieval corporate

Christianity was a fiamework that both enabled and defined the experience available to any

given audience member?

Because that fiamework was so complex and pervasive, and not limited to

langage alone in any of its manifestations, the members of the audience would surely

have expected non-verbal aspects of the plays to serve fùnctions like those of the verbal

Rogerson (Toronto: U of Toronto P7 1979) 1 1, 697

" RecordF of Ear& E,tglish Drama: Chester, ed. Lawrence M . Clopper (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1979) 27.

" Due, Stripping of the Alturs 13 1 .

" As Laurelle LeVert puts it, medieval pietistic texts "are constructed to suggest that one's response defines the meaning of the text, but only when that response is within the bounds of theologicai orthodoxy." "Rhetoric of Response" 12. See ais0 Charles Pythian- Adams, "Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry, 1450- 1550," C ' s and Order in English Towns, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972) 57-85.

28

elements." Thus this study must consider the totality of staging and linguistic effects, aii

of the signs available as far as is possible. when considering the plays it treats. Such a

hotistic approach may seem contradictory for a çtudy that focuses on language. Yet it is

precisely the habit of not imaghing the plays in production that has in the past led to the

rnistake, made by some of the finest scholarly minds, of focussing on the plays' villains,

who, on the page, seem to have ail the best Iines.

Robertson Davies describes the reading of plays thus:

If [the play] is old, 1 want to know what amused its first audiences; [...] 1

never think of it as a book, but as a play which 1 must perform, however

inadequately, for myself. My production is a second best, but it is far, far

better than n~thing. '~

It is ody in production, even if only a second-best one, that the quaiity of the language

and its effect can be understood. It is in that way that the readings in this dissertation are

attempted, and it is in that way that the language, depiction, and fhction of the saints in

Middle English drarna is interpreted.

The framework amund which this study is based is the classical tnad of logos,

'' DU@, Stripping of l e Aiturs 133, lists some of the corporate responsibilities and activities of late medieval lay people, which range tram books to vestments to church fûmishings to ecclesiasticai tools such as the pyx. It is not difficult to see dramatic analogies with scripts, costumes, set pieces, and hand props, al1 with symbolic fùnctions.

'6 Robertson Davies, "Making the Best of Second Best," A Voicefrom the Attic: Essays on the A r t of Reading, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1 990) 1 50.

29

ethos, and pathos: persuasion by logic, characîer, and emotional appeal. Fïrst, the

character of Thomas in di four English cycles and the Comish Ordinulia wiii be shown to

be at the centre of a conflict, not only over the nature of the re~utrection but also over the

utiiity of language to persuade. The plays of Thomas, deeply involved as they are with

one of the most puzzling of Christian mystenes, interweave the issues of resurrection and

rhetoric, showing that whiie deliberative and judiciai rhetoric based on logos may be

insufficient in the realm of faith, panegyric rhetoric based on parhos may point the way to

a rhetoric capable of moving and convincing an audience. The chapter wül end with an

examination of what that rhetoric may be and what assumptions it rnakes about the

audience.

Second, the character of Mary Magdalene in the Digby play of her life will be

shown to be an exemplar of that kind of rhetoric. Crucially, however, she will also be

shown to be an example of how a playwright concerned deeply with authority rnay see

language and persuasion differently fiom one concerned primady with mystery. To this

playwright, the primary problem facing both the characters and the audience is one of

direction and allegiance; the play is built around problems of tme and false authority.

Thus, in addition to the uniting power of parhos, the Digby play of Mas, Magdaierre

suggests that the need for the guidance of authority in approaching the holy requires

persuasion by ethos as well; as such, it creates a portrait of Mary Magddene that is quite

Or, as Aristotle defines them, "the proof. or apparent proof. provided by the words of the speech," "the personal character of the speaker," and "putting the audience into a certain fiame of mind." Rheforic, trans. W. Rhys. Roberts, me Worh of Anstolle, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford UP, repr. Chicago: William Benton, 1952) 595 (1 356a).

difFerent fiom much modem expeaation, and who both dehes and ernbodies the

cornmunity she leads towards the true authority of Christ.

Third, the character of Joseph in the York Cycle is shown to act as not only

representative of the audience but also interrnediary behiveen it and the mysteries of the

Incarnation. Not merely the ordinary man that he seems, nor yet the buffoon that he has

sometimes been d e d , Joseph instead shows the rhetorical techniques of the York Cycie

to be transactional in nature. Like the Thomas plays, the York plays of Joseph show the

Iimits of logos and of deliberative and judicial rhetoric, and depend on parhos and

panegyric. Like the Digby Mary Magdalene, they show the importance of ethos. Yet

they also emphasise most vividly the importance of the implied audience in completing the

rhetorical situation.

Finally, the character of Paul in the Digby Coriversiori of Sairlr Paul will be

examined in an attempt to synthesize the points made in the previous chapters. The elhos

of the central character and its possible interpretations, the failure of certain kinds of

rhetonc based on logos and the privileging of others based on @os, and the role of the

audience, both implied and actual, will go some way towards building up a complete

picture of how the rhetonc of the saints works.

Ultimately. this thesis is intended as a demonstration of the kind of rhetoric that

underlies the saints in medieval biblical drarna: aware of ail forms of linguistic facility, and

using the three classical modes of logos, ethos, and @os, it nonetheless understands

their limitations; dependent upon the need to persuade, it also sees the ditnculty in doing

so. It is a rhetoric that ultimately does what al1 non-propagandistic rhetorics do: in

3 1

reaching out t o the audience, in admitting its own limitations but showing its good will, it

invites the audience to complete the process of teaching, moving, and persuading that it

initiates. The persuasion it attempts is to lead the audience to the holy Me, and it uses the

saints as exemplars and rhetors in its attempts to do so.

These four chapters wiii, in summary, deal with different characters and different

issues, but will attempt to constitute a roughiy complete sketch of the o u t h e s of the

rhetoric of sainthood in Middle English drama- More than that this study does not claim,

as it is intended as a beginning, not an end. It may seem peculiar that this study should

focus on these saints rather than on the two central figures in the medieval Christian

universe: Christ and the Vir-@n. It is not that those two figures' rhetoric works in any

radically difYerent way from that of the lesser saints; it may, however, be easier to

approach them after considering the saints. As V. A. Kolve writes,

A most important aspect of human goodness as shown on the Corpus

Christi stage is [...] the ideal form that Christ and Mary demonstrate as a

new goal in human life. But they are as masters, and the rest as pupils.

The other good people on this stage will reveal virtue in smaller and Iess

perfect ways; their goodness is achieved in spite of their f d e n nature. and

the signs of struggle are usually visible. [..J Even those chosen twelve who

follow Christ and see His example often find goodness difficult, and there is

no suggestion that the audience will find it easier than they."

Because the struggle of imperfect humanity leaves clearer traces, and because the learning

" Kolve, Piay Caifed Corpus Christi 23 9.

process of the Unperfèct is at the hart of both rhetorical and religious situations, this

study will focus on the saintly but irnperfect, as a way of beghhg to define the

parameters of the topic of holy rhetoric in medieval drama. Full studies of the rhetoric of

Christ and the Virgin may be needed; but let us start by considering the earthly.

Chapter 2

Thomas's Doubts and the Parameters of Rhetoric

Thomas the a p o d e exists in a liminal space between faith and doubt; his story

therefore presents an opportunity for playwrights to help audiences negotiate similar

spaces in their own lives. The proverbial figure of "Doubting Thomas", however, is too

simple for effective drama, too flat to be sympathetic. Thomas is therefore fleshed out in

the biblical plays of late medievai England; much of his character is & a m fiom the

theoiogicai and aesthetic implications of medieval views of the Incarnation and

Resurrection. In addition, his interaction with Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the other

Apostles in the plays serves both to move the audience to faith and, paradoxically, to

demonstrate the parameters, limitations, and fùnction of Christian rhetoric as the

playwrights conceived of them: a rhetoric illurninated by, though not constrained by,

classical and Augustinian rhetorics.

The central problem of Christian rhetoric has always had to do with the limits of

rhetorical theory as defined by pagan philosophy, and the confiict of those limits with the

basic attitude of the Christian faith. As James J. Murphy has pointed out,

Greek and Roman rhetoric purported to deal with what Aristotle descnbed

as nonapodecitic proofs-that is, means by which an audience could be Ied

to believe an assertion without forma1 logical demonstration. [. . .] [Tlheir

maximum expectation is the creation of probability. But note, on the other

hand, the nature of Christian belief [...] Christ [...] was able to use the

Testament as absolute, apodecitic proof Other Jews were already

accustomed to this, but his reinforcement transmitted the methodology to

the newly conceived world-wide missionary effort which we have come to

cal1 C hristianity .

In other words, the need for c e ~ a i n t y that underlies a revealed religion must be uneasy

with the genteel probabilities and doubts of Athenian democratic and Roman republican

rhetorical methodology. It is in the story of Thomas, the doubter, that the medieval

p l a m g h t s confiont this uneasiness in their various ways.

The sources for Thomas's character are both scriptural and patristic. in the

Gospels, Thomas appears in al1 lists o f the twelve apostles, but is most distinguished fiom

his fellows in the Gospel of John- His first words in that Gospel come immediately before

the raising of Lazarus, and are themselves a foreshadowing of Christ's own death:

Then therefore Jesus said to them plainly: Lazarus is dead. And I am glad,

for your sakes, that 1 was not there, that you may believe: but let us g o t o

hirn. Thomas therefore, who is called D i d p u s , said to his fellow disciples:

Let us du, go, that we may die with hirn (John 1 1: 14-16)."

In the sarne Gospel, Thomas at the Last Supper asks the question, "Lord, we know not

" Murphy, Rheroric k the hliakile Ages 276-277.

"Tunc ergo Iesus dixit eis manifeste: L a m s mortuus en: et gaudeo propter vos, ut credatis, quoniam non eram ibi, sed eamus ad eum. Dixit ergo Thomas, qui dicitur Didymus, ad condiscipulos: Eamus et nos, ut moriamur cum eo." Latin biblical quotations are fiom the Vulgate, English ones fiom the Douai version.

whither thou goest; and how can we know the wa)n" (John 1 4:5)n and receives the

crucial answer, "1 am the way, and the vuth, and the Life" (John 14: 6)? Most famously,

of course, Thomas doubts the truth of the resurrection.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with

them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him: we have

seen the Lord. But he said to them: Except 1 shall see in his hands the

p ~ t of the nails and put my finger in the place of the nails and put my hand

into his side, 1 wiU not believe. And after eight days again his disciples

were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut,

and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you. Then he saith to

Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands, and brins hither thy

hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. Thomas

answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God. Jesus saith to him:

Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed: blessed are they

that have not seen, and have believed (John 20: 24-29)."

7 9 II Domine, nescimus quo vadis: e t quo modo possumus viam scire?"

80 II Ego sum via, et veritas, et vita."

" "Thomas autem unus ex duodecinq qui dicitur Didymus, non erat cum eis quando venit Iesus. Dixerunt erg0 ei aiii discipuli: Vidimus Dominum. Ule autem dixit eis: Nisi videro in manibus eius fixuram clavorum, et mittarn digihirn meum in locum clavorum, et rnittam manum meam in latus eius, non credam. Et post dies octo, itemm erant discipuli eius intus: et Thomas cum eis. Venit Iesus ianuis clausis, et stetit in medio, et dit: Pax vobis. Deinde dicit Thomae: Infer digiturn tuum huc, et vide manus meas, et aEer manum tuam, et rnitte in latus meum: et noli esse increddus, sed fidelis. Respondit Thomas, et d i t ei: Dominus meus et Deus meus. Dixit ei Iesus: Quia vidisti me Thoma, credidisti : beati qui non viderunt, et crediderunt ."

36

As skeletai as the accounts of Thomas are, in all three of his major appearances he is

connecteci irnrnediately to the problems of Christ's death and resurrection, and to the

problem of how Christians should live. Unsurpnsingly, this biblical association of a

shadowy, marginal figure with questions of central importance led to patristic

interpretation, both of the meaning of Thomas's and Jesus's actual words, and of Thomas's

character and state of rnind.

Such interpretztion was by no means unified. Gregory the Great was a defender of

Thomas, insisting upon the forhinate importance of his doubt. In his XZ Homifamm in

evmrgelia, he wrote,

More does the doubt of Thomas help us to believe, than the faith of the

Disciples who believed. For when he, through touching, is brought to

believe, our soul, putting ail doubt aside, is made firm in fith.=

By contrast, C hrysostom, in his Hamifia 8 7 in Joarr,lis evmrgelim, wrote,

As to give belief carelessly and simpiy is a sign of an easy disposition, so,

to question excessively is a sign of a slow intelligence. Of this latter

Thomas is accused. For when the Apodes say, we have seetr the Lord, he

did not believe [. ..] h e sought that testimony which is cmdest of all [.. .] not

"Plus enim nobis Thomae infidelitas ad fidem quarn fides credentium discipulorom profùit, quia dum ille ad fidem palpando reducitur, nostra mens, omni dubitatione postposita, in fide solidatur." Gregory the Great, Patrologra Latina ed. Migne 76.1556, 1202; Thomas Aquinas, Sumby Sennoru of the C h m h Fathers [Caîena Atcea], eà. and trans. M. F. Toal, vol. 2 (New York: Blackfnars, 1970) 269.

believing even in his own eyes?

This embarrassment at the idea of Thomas's touching of Jesus finds an echo in Augustine,

who wrote in his Tractaius 12 I in J m n i s evangelrwn,

Jesus said to them: Because you have seen me, you have believed. He did

not say, you have touched me. [...] It may be said that the Disciple did not

dare to touch, when He offered Himself for him t o touch: for it is not

written, And Thomas tou~hed.~"

Thus at least two different interpretations of Thomas are present in patnstic tradition: in

Gregory's interpretation, Thomas's touch is both real and positive in its implications for the

faithtùl, while in Augustine's and Chrysostom's, Thomas's touch is perhaps merely

figurative, and dubious in its implications.

The Middle English biblicai plays are ail finnly on the side of Gregory, as is late

medieval art in general. As Gai1 McMurray Gibson has noted, by the founeenth centuiy

the shameful interpretation of Thomas had largely given way to the more positive view, so

that sermons, sculpture, and other religious art depict him as an emblem of spiritual

questing and a fiiend to the faitfil . uideed, Gibson quotes one sermon that contains

'' "S icut simpliciter, leviterque credere, facilitatis est; sic ultra modum perquirere et explorare, crassissimae mentis. Ideo et Thomas accusatur; Apostolis enim dicentibus: 'Vidimus Dorninum,' non creditit [. . .] per crassissimum omnium sensum fidem quaerebat, neque oculis credebat." Chrysostom, Collectio selecta SS. Ecciesiae Patmm ed. D. A. B Caillau and D. M. N. S. Guillon, vol. 79 (Paris, 1835) 391-392; St~mby Semons vol. 2, 269.

"Dicit ei Jesus: Quia vidisti me, credidisti. Not ait, tetigisti me. [...] Quamvis dici possit non ausum fuisse Discipulum tangere, cum se offeret iiie tangendum: non enim scriptum est, Et tetigit Thomas." Augustine, Opero Omnia, ed. D. A. B. Caillau, vol. 16 (Paris, 183 8) 4 12-4 13, My translation.

practicaüy a direct translation of Gregory:

Take we now hede to bis gospel, and 3e may see bat Seynt Thomas dud us

more good fiorowe is mysbeleue pan did ali apostels bat beleued anoon.

For be hym is putt awey al1 dowtes of oure feysth, we are made stabull

in be beleue."

The popular and influential Meditutiones vilae Christi ai= states, rather bluntly, "This

doubt of Thomas was permitted by dispensation, so that the Resurrection of the Lord

rnight be proved by visible proofs. "' Furthermore. the Legel& aurea states that Thomas

"came to know the Lord's resurrection in t w ~ ways-not only by sight, iike the others, but

by seeing and touching."" Similarly, while the plays contain confiict between the apostles,

with Thomas usually reviled by the others for his lack of faith, the plays ultimately al1

portray Thomas's doubt in a sympathetic Light and the resolution of his doubt in an

insistently corporeai, non-rhetorical marner- Like Joseph's doubt of the Incarnation,

Thomas's doubt of the Resurrection provides the audience with a link via physical proof to

the mystery portrayed before it. Furthermore, in each of the Middle English versions of

" Woodburn O. Ross, ed. Middle EtzgIish Sennorzs, EETS O.S. 209 (London: Oxford UP, 1940) 134, quoted in Gibson, nteater of Devotîon 16.

" Meditations ot~ the Lije oj Christ: At1 IIIz~strated ,'Mmn~script of the Fot~rtee~trli Centzrry, trans. Isa Ragusa, ed. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961) 370.

8-1 LLresurrecti~nem Christi quasi geminate et in duplum quarn al5 cognouiti; nam illi cognouerunt uidendo, iste uidendo et palpando." Jacobus de Voragine [Iacopo da Varazze], L e g e h mrrea, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Sismel: Edioni del Galluuo, 1998) vol. 1,53; Jacobus de Voragine, me GoICte~t Legendr Readings on the Saints, tram WiUiarn Granger Ryan, vo1.2 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993) vol. 1, 30.

Thomas's doubt, the audience sees, not ody the importance of faith, but the uitimate

inadequacy of language and reason in achieving faith.

In Self-Coltsuming Arrifacts, Stanley Fish argues that al1 truly Augustinian rhetoric

has such a perspective. In Fish's view, Augustinian rhetoric obeys the foUowing

principles: it persuades an audience to a point of Mew rather than a point of logic; its

language and overall structure show themselves to be inadequate and provisional; it shows

human perspectives in generai to be equally inadequate and provisionai; and it is, of

course, dependent on God's intervention for its final effect." As we shall see, these

'' Stanley E. Fish, Self-Connring Artifac ts: me Eqxrie~tce of Sevetrteenth- Celtirrry Lirerature (Berkeley: U of California P, 1972) 4 1-42. Fish's analysis of Augustine's De docirirra Chrisfiana l a d s to these conclusions, which are usehl as a statement of sorne of the book's implications. Fish is not, however, a wholly reliable cornmentator on Augustine. Using the same edition that Fish quotes, Orz Christiatt Doctrirte, tram. D. W . Robertson Jr. (New York: MacMillan, 195%)' one can see to what extent Fish's more specific interpretations are based upon partial readings of the text. For instance, according to Fish, Aurpustine implies that "Wisdom is irrelevant, insofar as the speaker has any responsibility for it, since to be wise he need oniy remember the words of Scripmre" (Fish, Serf-Cotzs1imirig 3 7). In fact, Augustine writes, "1 do not speak of the man who has read widely and memorized much, but of the man who has well understood and has diligently sought out the sense o f the Scriptures. [...] Those are undoubtedly to be preferred who remember the words less weii, but who look into the ha r t of the Scriptures wit h the eye of their O wn hearts" (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 1 22). Or again, Fish says that with Augustine, "in the end, eloquence is redefbed as the act of praying for its effects" (Fish, Serf-Cottstiming 32)- In fact, Augustine writes, "He who seeks to teach in speech what is good, spuming none of these three things, that is, to teach, to delight, and to persuade, shouid pray amisrrive that he be heard intelligently, willingly, and obedientl y" (Augusthe, On Christian Doctrine 1 42; my emphasis). Again, Fish quotes Augustine as saying, "And who shall bnng it about that we say what should be said though us and in the manner in which it should be said except Him, in 'whose hand are both we, and Our words'? ...[ sic] 'Take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak- For it is not you that speak, but the spirit of your Father that speaketh in you," and draws from this quotation the conclusion that "the subject-the art of preaching-has been s h o w not to exist" (Fish, SeijXo~zsurning 34, Fish's ellipsis). In fact, Fish replaces the following with his eiiipsis dots: "And for this reason, he who would both know and teach should leam everything which should be taught and acquire a skiU in

general principles well describe the rhetoric not only of Thomas's plays but of many in

medieval biblid cirama,

In aü of the Middle Engiish plays of Thomas, the precise nature of his doubt is key

to the unfolding of plot and the revelation of character. Consideration of the plays'

invenrio consists largely in interpretation of the nature of that doubt, which is not clear

ftom the plays' key source text. The biblical Thomas says merely, "1 wiil not believe"

(John 20:25). '9 He does not speci@ exactly whcll he wiii not beiieve; the details were left

up to the theologian and the playwright. In the plays, his disbelief is not so simple as

disbelieving the resurrection; rather, it has to do with firly precise theological thinking

about the resurrection. Thomas, rather than being a figure of generic doubt, despair, or

cynicism (in other words, rather than being a "doubting Thomas"), is instead incredulous

of only one thing: the resurrection of the body.

When a medieval playwright begins to think of ways in which to convey this doubt

to the audience, he must first focus on the doctrines of the Resurrection. T o p ; for the

treatment of this subject are not to be found in classical rhetorical doctrine, of course, but

abound in apostolic, patristic, and medieval Christian writings. One set of topoi is set out

by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:

But some man will say: How do the dead rise again? or with what manner

speaking appropriate to an ecclesiastic, but at the time of the speech itself he should think that which the Lord says more suitable to good thought" (Augustine, On Chrisian Doctrine 140). Fish is guilty of hyperbole; in his zeal to prove that Augustine's te= is self-consuming, he ignores many of the nuances of Augustine's arguments and assertions and replaces them with sweeping gestures that Augustine does not actually make himself.

'Won credam."

of body shall they corne? [...] And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not

the body that shall be; but bare grah, as of wheaî, or some of the rest. But

G d giveth it a body as he d: and to every seed its proper body. [...] In a

moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet

will sound, and the dead shaü rise again incorruptible: and we shaii be

changed (1 Cor 1535, 37-38,52)?

The metaphor of the seed, and the assertion of the transformation of the body fiom

corruptible to incorruptible (yet niil corporeal), continued to be topd in Christian writing

and art throughout the Middle ~ g e s . ~ * The seed metaphor, however, proved troubling. In

the thirteenth cenniry, Aquinas was one of a number of writersgz who argued that it was

potentially misleading-specificaily that it implied that resurrection was a natural not a

supernatural process. Aquinas argues that the seed metaphor was intended not to

illustrate the method by which resurrection took place but the nature of the resurrected

body, and "that resurrection is, in its cause, supernatural not nat~ral."~' This contrast

90 "Sed dicet aliquis: Quomodo resurgunt mortui? qualive corpore venient? [.. .] Et quod seminas, non corpus, quod fùturum est, seminas, sed nudum granum, ut puta tntici, aut alicuius caeterorum. Deus autem dat iiii corpus sicut wlt: et unicuique seminum proprium corpus. [...] In momento, in ictu oculi, in novissima tuba: canet enim tuba, et mortui resurgent incorrupti: et nos immutabimur."

9' See Caroline Waiiïer Bynum, nie Resurrectio~~ of the Bo& in Westent Christianity, 200-1 336 (New York: Columbia UP, 1995).

9' Bynum, Resurrection of the Body 232-247.

93 Bynum, Remection of the Bot@ 234. Thomas Aquinas, Firposittones Job, chapter 1 9, lectio 2, Opera omnia, vol. 1 8, ed. S. E. Fretté (Paris, 1 876) 1 19- 120.

42

between naturai causai@ and supernatual causality is one of two that underiie al1 of the

medieval Thomas plays.

The other contrast that shapes the plays is that between corporeal and

noncorporeal expianations of resumection. Perhaps the bluntest biblical assertion of

bodiIy resurrection is to be found in Job: "And 1 shall be clothed again with my skin, and

in rny flesh 1 shall see Gd' (Job 19:26).% But whatever its sources, the doctrine of bodily

resurrection was centrai to Christianity from the beginning; in the late Middle Ages, it

took on particular significance with the general emphasis on corporeality in popular piety.

In the visuai arts, portrayals of the very episode we are considering show a positive

fascination with the subject, with Christ ofien seizing Thomas's hand and pulling it

towards his wo~nds.~ ' Such apparent morbidness was not, however, fascination for its

own sake, as has been argued? Rather,

for al1 its g o s s physicality, its fùnction was spiritual, to bring home to the

spectator the reality of his own mortality, and thereby to bring him to a

sense of the urgency of his own need for conversion. More irnmediately, it

was designed to evoke fellow-feeling and p i e

9' "Et rursum circumdabor peUe mea, et in cane mea videbo Deum meum."

% One thinks of Johan Huizinga's assertion that late medieval depictions of death were rnerely "superficial, primitive, popular, and lapidary image[s]. [...] It seems as if the late medieval mind could see no other aspect of death than that of decay." The Aut1trnn of rhe M&ie Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1 996), trans. of Heflsttz~ der Miciaefeeuwen ( 1 92 1 ) 1 56.

" Du@, Siripping of the Af~ors 307.

for the dead or suffering. Thus the wmbination of key top1 that shape the plays'

doctrine-tthat the Resurrection is both miraculous and corporeal__existed in contexts of

both scholarly speculation and popular piety, and the play itself: with its combination of

logical argument and alogical, emotional assertion, can be seen as an exploration of the

two.

The importance of the physicality of Christ for popular piety has been argueci

numerous times; the rhetorical implications of it as a species of proof are also important,

however. Aristotle argues that

[o]f the modes of persuasion some beiong strictly to the art of rhetoric and

sorne do not. By the latter 1 mean such thuigs as are not supplied by the

speaker but are there at the outset-witnesses, evidence given under

tomre, wrïtten contracts, and so on.*

Thus Christ's provision of physical evidence following the failure of the Apostles to

convince Thomas seems to set limits on the power of rhetoric in the realrn of faith.

Accordingly, the plays of Thomas explore the Iimitations of human language and the

fiinctions thereof Such a project might seem to undercut their very function. As we shall

see, however, once they have made their exploration they also skilfblly suggest a way out

of the trap they seem to set for themselves by pointing the way to an incarnationai rhetoric

somewhat different fiom its classical predecessors.

The Chester cycle's pzthetic effect in this episode can be difficult to judge. In this

cycle, which has been calleci a cycle of v i d signs by more than one critic,- Peter's

announcement to Thomas that "We have seene the lord Jesu" (Chester 1912 17) may be

particularly compelling in context, although the relative flatness of the verse and the

importance of nontextuai aspects to the cycle as a whole make it difficult to know how

cornpelling it is meant to be. Indeed, Thomas responds not with argument or even with

passion, but instead moves directîy to a statement of the importance of his own senses:

Shdl 1 never leeve that this ys trewe,

by God omnypotent,

but 1 see in his handes two

holes the nayles can in go

and put my fjmger eke alsoe

thereas the nayles went.

(Chester 19/2 18-223)

In no other version of the story is Thomas so unargumentative; he simply States his doubt

and asserts that physicai, non-rhetoricd proof is all that wiii make hirn believe. Indeed,

compared to his analogues he is quite well-tempered, even placid:

Wherever you goe, brethren deare,

" See, for instance, Alexandra F. Johnston, "Performance Practice lnformed by Image: The Iconograp hy of the Chester Pageants, " Spectacle and Imclge in Rei~aissance Erwope: Selected P q e r s of the AXUInd Conference at the Centre d ~ t r d e s Supirieurs de la Rerraismrce de Tours. 29 h e - 8 Jzdy 1989, ed. André Lascombes (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993, esp. 254-262. For discussions of the semiotic implications of such Msualism, see David Mills, "The Chester Cycle," Cmbridge Cornpanior~ 124- 132, and Judith Ferster, "Writing on the Ground: ïnterpretation in Chester Play W," Sipr. Sr,rterrce. Discourse: h~grdage iri Medieval Khor~ght and Lirerature, ed. Juiian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1989) 179- 193.

1 will goe with you in good manere;

but this talke you teil mee here

1 leeve not tiil 1 see.

(Chester 19/228-23 1)

When Christ does appear to Thomas, the apode declares, "Nowe leeve 1 withowt

weeninge" (Chester 19/25 l), a word that the play's editors sometimes gloss as " d ~ u b t , " ' ~

although its more ordinary sense is "supp~sition,"'~' as in Langland's "Wenynge is no

wysdom ne wys ymaginacion:/ffomo proponit et Deus disponit" (Passus 20/3 3 -3 4)1°'.

The word here makes good sense in its prirnary meaning. Thomas's declaration that he

now believes without resorting to the need for argument, proof, or opinion declares boldly

that the body of Christ in the expenence of the believer is the only proof possible, and that

faith is the only means of attaining that proof.

Martin Stevens has noted in the Chester cycle the absence or diminution of such

pathetic elements as a strong Virgin Mary, a human-seeming Christ, a joyful God, al1 of

'00 See, for instance, David Mills, ed., The Chester Mystery Cycle: A New Editi011 with Modeniised Spelling Fast Lansing, MI: Colleagues P, 1992) 345, and David Bevington, ed. Medievai D r a a (Boston: Houghton, 1975) 636. Lurniansky and Mills gloss the word as "doubting" in this play, but as "thinking" in play 23, Iine 74, and make several other distinctions between the two senses of the word. Chester vol. 2, 46 1.

1°' The OED, 2nd ed., notes that the Middle English meaning of the word is most often "mere opinion, surrnise or suspicion (as opposed to certain knowledge)."

l m William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A CriticaI Editio~ri of the B- Texr Based on Trittity College Cambridge MS B. 2 5.1 I, ed. A. V. C . Schmidt, 2nd ed., Everyman (London: Dent, 1995) 347.

46

which appear much more nrongly in the other Middle Enghsh cycles.lm It may be that the

Chester playwrïght's emphasis on signs led him to focus upon the apodeictic aspect of

Christ's physical appearance, severing it &om overtly pathetic overtones; whether his

audience did so also is another question, and ultirnately not an answerable one.

The most unusual and the longest-and rhetoricaiiy one of the most complex-of

the Thomas plays is the Towneley version. This is not a well-loved or fiequently cited

play; Eleanor Prosser's evaluation of it as "an illustration of some of the serious faults to

which revisers of the fifieenth century were prone"lM is a succinct enough statement of its

alleged ment that no fùrther assessrnent seems needed. Prosser's evaluation becomes

more revealing a few lines later, however, when she attempts to get to what she sees as

the reai problem:

The Towneley piaywright's difficulty is clear: he was a bad preacher.

Having chosen his text, he did not fist make up his rnind what it meant.

Unless a playwright knew what he wanted Thomas to "mean" to his

audience, he could not select and order actions, develop character, and

insert doctrinal signs al1 to one purpose. los

In other words, the Towneley playwight had problems with irrverrtio, dispositio, and

e lmt io ; he was a poor rhetorician. He had not decided upon the Gregorian or

1 03 Martin Stevens, F m Midie firgiish Mystery Cycles: Texmai, Contextua/, ami

Crifical Interpretafions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1987) 272, 276.

101 Prosser, Drama and Religion 1 57.

'O5 Prosser, Dr- and Religion 1 57.

47

Augustinian/Chrysostomist interpretation of Thomas, and therefore had no united

argument to present; thus, he could not properly arrange his material or select fining

words or other signs for it. Rosemary Woolfl on the other hand, found that the play

moves in a deiiberate progression fiom a satirical to a mystical style, a rather dEerent

assessment of the playwright's rhetorid technique.'"'j

Woolf's, in this case, is by far the more perceptive view; there is in fact very little

confùsion of doctrine in the TowneIey play. Thomas in Towneley is a well-meaning man

of faith who suffers fiom a very specific forrn of spiritual blindness, one which makes him

unable to accept the resurrection of the body in the state of mind in which he h d s himself

His blind spot is estabiïshed imrnediately upon his entrance, when he is confionted with the

other disciples' clairns and speaks quite precisely regarding his doubts:

Let be for shame! Apartly,

Fantom dyssauys the.

Ye sagh hym not bodely;

His gost it my&t weH be,

For to @ad youre hartes sory

In youre aduersyté.

(Towneley 28/3 2 1 -3 26)"'

lM Woolf. Englsh Mystery P l q s 282-283. Peter Meredith seems to agree with Woolf for the most part, saying that "the argument between Thomas and the other apostles is handled with considerable ingenuity and naturalness," although he opines that it aiso "goes on too long." "The Towneley Cycle," Cambridge Cornpanicm 1 57.

'O7 Ail citations of the Towneley Plays, unless othewise indicated, refer to The Towneley Plqys, ed. Martin Stevens and A.C. Cawley, EETS S.S. 13-14 (Oxford: Oxford

48

Thomas does not doubt that the Apostles may have seen Christ &er his death. Nor does

he doubt that Christ may have corne to comfort them in spirit; in fact, he seems to think it

a likely possibility. He also does not make iight of their "aduersytéW; in fact, it is he who

asks them to take their own grief more senously than he thinks they are taking it. Nor, in

this play, is he the ody one to doubt the resurrection of the body. The disbelief of the

Apostles at the play's outset focuses on the sarne specific doctrine:

-1 It is som spirite or els som gast;

Othere was it noght.

Wë may trow on no kyns wise

That ded man may to Iyfe ryse;

This then is oure thoght (Towneley 28B- 13).

A key difference, in fact, is that Peter speaks only of "som spirite"; he does not guess that

it might be Jesus's own ghost sent for comfort, as Thomas later does. Furthemore, the

basis for the Apostles' disbelief of Mary Magdalene and the basis for Thomas's disbetief of

Peter are quite different fiom each other.

The Apostles base their disbelief of Mary Magddene's account on a distrust of her

character; this distrust is expressed in terms of antiferninist satire. Indeed, Paul, perhaps

the prototypical antifeminia of the Church, is present in personlO" despite the play's

chronology to make the point about women's untrustworthiness:

UP, 19941, and are cited by play number and line number.

'O8 It is to be noted that he is never revealed by Rame to the audience as Paul; oniy Peter and Thomas are named in the dialogue.

And it is wretyn in oure law,

'There is no trust in womans saw,

No uust faith to belefe;

For with thare quayntyse and thare gyle

Can thay laghe and wepe somwhiie,

And yit nothyng theym grefe' (Towneley 28/29-34).

The Pauline letters, of course, contain influentid statements against women's preaching ( 1

Cor. 14:3 5, 1 Tim. 2: 1 1 - 12), but the antifeminist tradition was not soIely dependent on

those. The play's most recent editors suggest that Paul's rebuke here depends far more on

contemporary preaching than upon actual Pauiine writinss.*" Woolf argues that this

fashionable antiferninism "serves the same purpose as [. ..] in the plays of Joseph's

Do~bts,""~ that is, to provide a contrast benveen the miracle of incarnation and "the

satirical fabliau style of the fallen world.""l But Paul is not referring to any fubliata but

to the sermon tradition; fùrthermore, he explicitly refers to texts, not oral tradition as

Woolf suggests. It is striking that Paul insists so strongly upon "oure law," an attitude

more cornmonly associated in Middle English drama with the tyrants of the Passion,

especially Amas and Caiaphas. Sirnilarly, his elaboration, "In oure bookes this fjmde we

wretyn-/Ail manere of men well it wyttyn-" (Towneley 28/35-36) echoes the smugness

of the Doctors in the Temple whom Christ rebukes at the beginning of his ministry.

-- - ~

la, Towneley P i q s vol. 2, 618.

lLO WooI$ Engiïsh Mystery Plàys 282.

" ' Woolf, English Mystery Plàys 1 77.

50

Paul is relying above ail upon a series of maxims about the nature of certain fonns

of hurnan being. This is a particular body of rhetorician's lore that onginates with

Aristotle's catalogue of human types in Book Two of the Rtcetoric but finds its fidiest

expression in the Middle Ages with the Pastoral Cme of Gregory the Great. 'lz But

rather than pursuing the Aristoteiian or Gregorian purpose of such categorization-judging

the best way to address an audience so categorized-Paui instead uses it to judge the

tnistworthiness of a speaker, her efhos. This is, as we shall see, an issue of centrai

importance to the character of Mary Magdalene in the Digby play devoted to her.

Thomas, on the other hand, bases his disbelief of Peter not on a generai assessment

of Peter's character but on questioning of Peter's current state of mind:

Whannow, Peter, art thou mad?

On lyfe who was hyrn lyke?

For his deth 1 am not @ad,

For sorow my hart wdi breke,

That with the Iues he was so stad,

To ded they can hyrn wreke.

Thou hym forsoke, so was thou rad,

When they to the can speke (Towneley 28/305-3 12).

Even Thomas's reference to Peter's betrayal of Jesus does not focus on any traitorous

nature in Peter, but on the state of mind he was in at the tirne. The distinction between

Thomas's assessment of Peter and Paul's assessment of Mary Magdalene is that between

Murphy, Rhetoric in the M ' e Ages 293-296.

5 1

two species of characterization (ethopwia) as practised in rhetorical training of the late

Middle Ages: one focussed on "generai character or habit of mind," whiie one focussed

on "the immediate emotions occasioned by a given situation.""' Thomas's concem is

entireiy with the latter; he speaks not only of Peter's state of mind but his own, and notes

the impossibility of belief as he is:

Thou has answerd me fiil1 weie

And fiIl skyhlly,

Bot my hart is harde as stele

To trow in sich mastry (Towneley 28/385-388).

Thus Thomas is concerned with the present emotional situation, not with general

statement s of character: with the latter species of ethopia , not the former.

A focus on emotion allows Thomas to escape some of the more cynicai ways of

viewing humanity, namely, those that focus on unchangeability of character. Paul's

remarks to Mary Magdalene suggest that she is inevitably untmstworthy, that her s i f i l

nature is inherent and unchangeable; Thomas's rebuke to Peter, by contrast, suggests that

his upset state of mind is temporary. In addition, Thomas adrnits that his own state of

mind, stirred up as it is, is at least potentially changeable.

Thus, in focussing on Thomas's role as depicted in this play, we must conclude that

the author saw hun as, first, not cynically doubting the Resurrection per se, but doubting

only and specifically the resurrection of the body; second, as concerned with ethos, but

I l 3 Henrik Specht, "Ethopoeia' or Impersmation: A Neglected Species of Medieval Characterization," Chaucer Review 21 (1986) 5 .

52

specifically with the current state of mind of hirnself and his ïnterlocutors, rather than on

his perceptions of their unchangeable character.

With this combination of fopi and this emphasis on methods of argument, the

piaywright is equipped with appropriate material to begin the work of disrribtitio. As

suggested, a combination of logos and ethos is called for, and such a combination is

precisely what the play shows. When Thomas is not asserting the turbulent emotions of al1

those present, he and the other apostles attempt to engage each other in logical arpments

which turn on the play's key fopoi.

Some of Thomas's arguments deal wholly with the miraculous nature of the

Resurrection; in these, Thomas doubts that any supernaturd help can be forthcorning

because Christ himself is the highest source of help and yet was killed.

Man, if thou can vnderstand,

C v s t saide hisself, mynnys me,

That dl lokyn was in his hande,

Al1 oone was God and he.

The son wax marke, al1 men seand,

When he died on the tre;

Therfor am 1 full sore dredand

That-who myght his boote be? (Towneley 28/337-344)

Sen he was God and ded lay,

From ded who myght hyrn cdl? (Towneley 28/527-528)

Thomas focuses on the natural processes of life that, in his rnind, must govem both life

and death in the absence of such miraculous aid:

He was hl1 sothfast in his sawes,

That dar I hertly say,

And rightwys in al1 his lawes

Whils that he 1yS.d ay;

Bot sen he shuld thole hard thrawes

On tre whils that he lay,

Dede has determyd his days,

Hys lyfe noght trow 1 may. (Towneley 28/433440)

Other arguments of Thomas focus more specifically upon the corporeaiity of the

Resurrection, asserting, as we have seen, that the body cannot rise, only the spirit.

When Cryst Cam you to vysyte.

As ye tell me with saw,

A whyk man fiom a spyryte,

Wherby couth ye hem knaw? (Towneley 28/373-376)

Thus the questions of whether the Resurrection is naturd or supernatural, and corporeal

or noncorporea1, become key issues in the play due to Thomas's own concems.

The Apostles' answers to Thomas's arguments are, of course, ineffective; the

piaywright cannot make them convince Thomas and remain tme to his source. Yet several

of the Apostles' answers are ineffective also fiom a rhetorical point of view; while they

reflect orthodox dogma, they are not strictly relevant to Thomas's doubts. For instance, in

reply to the first argument of Thomas's that 1 have quoted, "Quartus Apostolus" says,

The holy gost in Marye light,

And in hir madynhede

Goddys Son she held and di@,

And cled hym in manhede.

For Iuf he wentt as he had hight,

To fight withoutten drede;

When he had termynd that fi@,

He skypt outt of his wede (Towneley 25/345-352).

AI of what this apostle says may be so, yet it does not answer Thomas's question, as

Thomas himself points out: "If he skypt outt of his clethyng,Nit thou grauntys his cors

was ded" (Towneley 28/353-354).'14 The ne\? apostle does somewhat better, managing to

assert both the corporeality and the supernaturd quaiity of the Resurrection:

The gost went to hell apase

Whils the cors lay slayn,

And broght the sawles fiom Sathanas

I l 4 This moment is rather curious. because Thomas then suggens for the first and only time that it may have been an animated corpse that appeared to the Apostles: "It was his cors that maide shewyng/Vnto you in his sted" (Towneley 28/3 55-3 56). Such a unique and illogicai moment makes one wonder if the scribe mistakenly wrote "cors" for "gost," carrying the word "cors" over tiom the previous line, especially since "Quintus Apostolus" in the next stanza makes a conscious and precise distinction between what Christ's "gost" did and what his "cors" did during the period of his death, as if answering a point of Thomas's. But this is mereIy speculation.

For wtùch he sufiecf payn.

The thryd day right he gase,

Right vnto the cors agayn;

Mi* God and man he rose,

And therfor ar we fayn (Towneley 28/36 1-368).

Yet this apostle still does not really address Thomas's doubts; his assertions may be tme,

but they are unargued. Thomas, niîi unconvinced, does not even respond, asking instead

for "a skyll per@teft (Towneley 28/371), a more definite sort of proof Later still, he

begins to ask for what the rhetoricians cal1 "inartificial proof "'15 o r what modem lawyers

would cd1 "physical evidence" :

Say, bad ne any of you fele

The woundys o f his body,

Flesh o r bone o r ilka dele,

To assay his body? (Towneley 28/389-392).

This kind of proof takes Thomas and the Apostles fully out of the realm of rhetoric;

rhetoric "is needed at times and in cases where the f aa s don't speak for thern~elves,""~ but

Thomas is beginning t o ask precisely for physical and eloquent facts, not for arçuments

frorn the Apostles.

It is at this point also that Thomas breaks his prevïous pattern o f focussing on

I I 5 Richard A Lanham, A htdlisf of Rhetot?ca/ Tenns, 2'"' ed. (Berkeley: U of California P, 199 1) 166.

I l 6 Gerald A. Hauser, It~trdttctÏon to Rherorical Theory (Prospect Heights, iL: Waveland P, 1986) 72.

emotion, and begins to attack the unchangïng aspects of the ethos of his fellows:

Lo, sich foly with you is,

Wyse men that shuld be,

That thus a womans witnes trowys

Better then that ye se (Towneley 28/4 1 7-420).

The Apostles at this point are lefl with little recourse but to assert the trutffilness of their

witnesses and the perils of Thomas's unbelief, rather than trying to argue about the

doctrine itself Ultimateiy, afier much wrangling, Decimus Apostolus can do nothing

other than to demand without proofs, "Trow his rysyng by dayes threyn/Sen he died on

the rode" (Towneley 28/5 5 5-556). Thus Thomas and his intertocutors have had to corne

painfiilly to gnps with the inability of arwment, lo@c, or speech to convey belief in the

Resurrection. Ultimately, the rhetoric of the Towneley author leads the audience to the

point at which argumentative rhetoric fails and faith without logical proofs must take over.

Of course, it is not a blind faith but a seeing, sensory faith; it is also, surprisingly, a

rhetoricaily charged faith. At Thomas's demand at last for physical proof that he himself

can experience, C i ~ i s t appears and invites Thomas, "Putt thi hande in my syde, no fies"

(Towneley 281565). Furthemore, Christ's closing speech about seeing and not seeing,

while Scriptural in its literai meaning, is suggestive of a more tangible, "incarnational"

reading:

Thomas, for thou felys me

And my woundes bare,

Mi risyng is trowed in the,

And so was it not are.

Al1 that it trowed and not se,

And dos d e r my lare,

Euer blissid mot thay bey

And heuen be theym yare (Towneiey 28/641-648).

The precise choice of words-"trowed in thew-suggests not oniy that the Resurrection is

beiieved by Thomas, but that the audience's faith in the Resurrection is to be located in the

figure of Thomas, as a kind of sacrament. Such a readincg is not only consistent with the

Gregorian reading of Thomas which, as we have seen, govems late medieval t iews o f the

saint, but it is also consistent with the sudden lyricisrn into which Thomas bursts upon

seeing the risen Christ:

Mercy, Iesu, honoure o f man,

Mercy. Iesu, mans socoure,

Mercy, Iesu, rew thi leman;

Mans saull thou boght fùll sore!

Mercy, Iesu, that may and can

Forgif syn and be socoure;

Mercy, Iesu, as thou vs wan,

Forgif and gif thi man honoure (Towneley 28/609-6 2 6) .

This ending to Thomas's forty-eight line speech is built, like the rest of the speech, around

arlaphora on the words "mercy, Iesu"; in addition, the homoioteleutor~ of "forgif and gif,"

the ar~aphoru of "forgif," the co~~d~qdicatio of "man[s]," and the epcntafepsis of "honoure

of rnadrnan honouren knit this stanza into a web of interrelated ideas, al1 based upon

forgiveness, grace, and hurnan experience.

The lyricism of this speech"' brings the play fuUy into a dinerent rhetoncal branch.

Up until now, the play has wavered mostly between the two argumentative branches of

rhetoric: judicial, in the attempts by Thomas and the apodes to explain the facts as they

understand them, and deliberative, in the apostles' waniings to Thomas about the

consequences of unbelief. Now, however, Thomas concludes the play with a strong

movement into the panegyric, the rhetoric of pure prise. Michael Dixon has argued that

in pane=+c, the audience is 'hot called upon to reach a decision or act-only feelings and

atiitudes are affected.""' ln the realm of Christian faith, however, fetlings and aîtitudes

are equivalent to decisions and actions insofar as they determine a person's position in

relation to God. In its closing with the panegyrk, and its intense emphasis on @os, the

Towneley play makes clear the equation between the physical and the pathetic that Du@

r~otes;"~ in its exhaustion of the logical and ethical means of persuasion, it leaves a

combination of the pathetic and the physical: the primary characteristics of late medieval

piety.

The Towneley play of Thomas, then, despite its faults, nonetheless has a definite

doctrine and plan. An explication of the doctrines of the Resurrection, particulariy its

"' Woolf notes (E~tglish Mprery P I q s 283) that it is intluenced by the affective mystical school of Richard Rolle.

"' Michael F.N. Dixon, 7he Poflirickv Courtier: Spenser S The Faerie Queene as a Rhetoric of Jt~stice (Montreal, McGill UP, 1 996) 205.

l9 DU@, Strippittg of the A Iturs 3 07.

supematuralness and corporeality, the play is dso a debate whose rhetoric is precise,

argumentative, progressive, and doomed to deliberate failure. Only afler Thomas and the

Apodes have fblly explored the appropriate doctrînes, only after they have argued by

logos and by two species of ethos, only d e r they have exhausted dl a r t i f id means of

discussion, does the play admit the failure of argumentative rhetoric in the arena of faith.

and admit physical, panegyric, pathetic proof, located in the eloquent body of Christ itself

When one considers the analogous episode in the Cornish OrJir~a/iu, one sees how

important these issues are to medieval drama. The characterization of Thomas is quite

different in the Cornish play fiom that in any of the Middle English plays: he is far more

ar~umentative, and a great deal less sympathetic. Yet the same issues of proof occur,

though they are not resolved in the same way. Structurally, of course, the Cornish play of

the Resurrection is much longer than any of the English pageants, and if it is so that "the

whoie play is [...] the answer to Thomas's do~bts ,"~ '~ then small wonder that his character

should differ fiom that of his Enslish analogues. Prosser has discussed the Cornish

Thomas at some lengh; she argues persuasively that "his role is dominant, even when he is

not on the stage."'" and notes that. unlike the English playwrights, the CoMsh playwright

makes Thomas the sole doubter. Nonetheless, problems of persuasion, proof, and their

limits still underlie the action.

When Mary ,Magdalene cornes to tell the Apostl~s the news of Christ's

"O Brian O. Murdoch, "The Cornish Medieval Drama" Cumbridgr Comparrioii 223.

"' Prosser, Drama ami Rrligio~t 1 68. See 1 67- 1 78 generaily .

resurrection, Thomas is among them; he reacts in a surlier manner than any of his English

analogues: "I'm asking you to hold your tongue. Stop this idle tdk, woman, and don?

trifle with us. Keep it up and, stout though Cade Maudlin be, I'U crack your banlements

for you"(204).'" Furthemore, Thomas is indeed the only doubter; unlike the T owneley

playwright, the Coniish playwright has Peter and the other Apostles react with

instantaneous faith and delight: "Ah, what happiness," says Peter, "to hear that Jesus the

Christ has risen fiom the grave! Well I know hïm to be not oniy Mary's son but likewise

God himself' (204). With that key assertion of the dual nature of Christ, the debate

begins, just as it does in the Towneley play.

A brief overview of the debate shows that the Comish playWn@t was concerned

with rhetorical and logical issues sirniIar to those facing the Towneley playwright.

Thomas begins with the axiorn that "No man. once dead, can ever live again under any

circumstances" (204); James the Elder immediately replies with, "On the contrary, it may

well be possible for the Son of God [,..] since the Jesus who is Mary's son created heaven

and earth from the formless void" (204). As we have seen elsewhere, Thomas thinks in

terms of natural processes; the counter-argument is that God stands outside of naturai

processes, indeed behind them, so that Thomas's thinking starts fiom an unwarranted

assumption.

'" Al1 citations are to ïhe Contish Ordinalia: A Mediewi Dramatic Mlogy, trans. Maricham Harris (Washington, DC: Catholic UP, 1969). Line numbers are not given in Hams's translation; page numbers will be cited in the text. Harris notes (266 n.7) that the exact meaning of the Comish at this point is, in fact, "stout though Cade Maudlin be, 1 will break thy head for thee atop"; he has 'tentured to wrap in a pun" the literd meaning of the fine in an attempt to convey idiom.

The debate between the Apostles does not proceed in an entirely logical fashion.

Thomas argues that Christ's omnipotence makes the resurrection implausible, because

"Without dying, the Lord could have saved everybody in the world" (205); Matthew's

reply that "Nevertheless, God elected to go down to the grave on our behalf and return

from it again" (205) only leads to an ad hominem reply, one of many fiom al1 sides of the

debate. The discussion quickly turns away fi-om Christ's nature and to the consequences

and conditions of Christian belief While Thomas keeps asserting that Christ's wounded

body cannot be alive, the other Apostles argue fiom other directions: from prophecy Che

said t o us that afler dying he would rise fiom the tomb"), from duty ("we are bound to

have faith), fiom consequence ("if not, Thomas, we shall never have the joy which knows

no end"), and even from tautology ("never say that Jesus, the peerless Lord. cannot nse,

since in al1 tnith he has risen").'" Ultimately. however, as in the Towneley play the

Apostles' initial belief or disbelief cornes from their perception of Mary kIa_edalene's

e rhos.

ANDREW: Hush, Thomas, and stop arguing. Assuredly our dear Lord has

renirned to Ise. Just as plainly, you have overdone this skepticism of

yours, considering the fact that Mary spoke to him only hours ago.

THOMAS: She's made a fool o f you. The girl has lied, Andrew, and don't

think she hasn't (207).

In a crucial section of dialogue, Thomas and Mary Magdalene address both this issue and

Thomas's own emotional condition, and their relationship to the problem of faith.

'= Ail of these quotations are from Hams, Comisrh OrJi~taIia 206.

62

THOMAS: My spirit will never accept the idea that the body which hung

dead before us came alive again. Whenever 1 think of the torment he

endured, gief seizes me, and 1 am in misery for him.

MARY MAGDALENE: 1 wonder, then, how you can be so stonyhearted

as not to beiieve. If you don't change, you'll never corne to heaven's bliss.

THOMAS: For stiame! Stop that kind of talk! You don't enjoy the

Master's confidence, not by a long shot in my opinion. You've been a

sinner, recognized, indeed, as the geatest in ail the country around (208).

Having exhausted the possibilities of logical argument, pathetic outburst, and ethical

appeal, the Comish playwright, like his Engiish counterparts, tums instead to physical

evidente: Jesus's appearances to the other ApostlesT and to Cleophas and his

~ompanion,"~ follow almost immediately alter this exchange.

Prosser notes that "[tlhis débat does not have the tight interlocking structure of the

first;""' the difference is scarcely to be wondered at. Dunng the first debate, each of the

Apostles approached the problem of belief fiom a different direction; afler Jesus's

appearance to them dl, their reasons for belief are identical: direct personal witness. Al1

they are able to do, like Mary Magdalene in the first debate, is to assert the evidenc2 of

their own expenence; similarly, dl Thomas is able to do in reply is to attack their

character. He does so in myriad ways. reminding Peter of his betrayal (21 5 ) , cdting John

"childish (2 13, accusing Matthew of feeling "no shame for the lies you tell" (2 16), and

pp --

"' The cornpanion is not named Luke in the Comish text, but remains anonymous.

"' Prosser, Drama and Religioii 1 73.

63

eventuaily calling Cleophas and bis cornpanion "a couple of beggars with their clothes a

rainbow of patches" (219). In the midst of his Airy, he does, like his English analogues,

suggest that perhaps the disciples might have seen a ghost (2 17), but he does not pursue

the point any fùrther, nor do any of the disciples take up the issue.

At last, Thomas names the condition for his belief, and Jesus appears to fùlfil it.

Upon receiving Jesus' forgiveness, Thomas notes his own folly in doubting not only the

Resurrection but the efhos of its witnesses: "Oh, God, what a fool 1 was when 1 would not

believe that Chnst was risen fiom the tomb dthough assured of it by many!" (220). This

assertion, dong with Thomas's focus on the character o f Mary Magddene and of Peter.

suggests that the Cornish playwright was far more concerned with erhos than his

counterpart in the Towneley cycle. It is not the case that pathos is absent in the Comish

play. but it is not made the final point as strongiy as it is in the Towneley play.

In the N-Town manuscript, the episode of the resurrection is actualIy split between

two of the manuscript's layers of revisiori; each layer's effect upon an audience is

therefore difficult to judge. Nonetheless, issues like those in the Towneley episode are

eiident. In the episode of "Peter and John at the Sepuichre" (N-Town 36)IL6, Peter and

John report back to the disciples that they have found the empty tomb. Thomas responds

immediately with a question that leads to speculation about whether the event is to be

understood naturally or supernaturally:

THOMAS We haue grett woundyr, everychon,

7Je N - T o w Pluy, ed. Stephen Spector, EETS ss 11-12 (Oxford: Oxford üP, 199 1 ).

Of wurdys bat 3e do speke.

A ston hl hevy lay hym vpon-

From vndyr bat ston how xulde he breke?

PETRUS The trewth to tellyn, it passyth oure wytt !

Wethyr he be resyn thorwe his owyn myght,

Or ellys stolen out of his pitt

Be sum man prevely be nyght.

@-TOW 36/ 1 5 5- 1 62)

This episode takes place near the end of the "Passion Play 2" layer of the N-Town cycle."'

which ends with Mary Magdalene's triumphant announcement to the Apostles that she has

seen the risen Christ, so that Thomas's doubt goes no farther. Mary ~Magdalene does

speciq that she saw Christ "Of flesche and bon quyk levynge man" ('N-Tow 37/89), but

the play explores the issue no more than this.

The "N-Town pageant" episode irnmediately following in the manuscript is quite

another case. It is marked "Apmicio Cleophe et Luce" (N-Town 38/s.d. 1) but contains

also, as in the Chester version, the appearance to Thomas. It explores the sarne issues as

the Towneley version, however, and in strikingly similar ways. Thomas again focuses on

the emotional state of the apostles and upon denying the corporeal and supematural

aspects o l resurrection:

'" See Peter Meredith, ed., 7ne Passi011 Playfiom the AL T o w ~ hfa~rrcscript (London: Longman, 1990), and N-Town Play vol. 2, 537-543.

Be in pes, Petyr, bu gynnyst to rave!

Thy wurdys be wantowne and ryght vnwyse.

How xulde a deed man bat deed lay in grave

With qwyk flexhe and blood to lyve ageyn ryse?

(N-Town 3 8/30 1-304)

The play does not go into the lengthy argument of the Towneiey version, however, but

moves quickly to Thomas's demand for physicai proof (N-Town 321-325). It ends,

however, with a long speech by Thomas, resembling the Towneley version in its rhetorical

flair and panegyric effect.

As a ravaschyd man whos witt is al1 gon,

Grett mornynge 1 make for my dredffiil dowte.

Alas, 1 was dowtefiil bat Cryst fiom vndyr ston

Be his owyn grett myght no wyse myght gone owte.

Alas, what mevyd me thus in my thought?

My dowteffûl beieve ryght sore me avexit.

The trewthe do 1 knowe bat God so hath wrought:

Quod mortuus et sepultus nunc resurrexit. (N-Town 3 8/3 53-360)

The alliteration of such phrases as "mornynge 1 make" and "dredfil dowte," the anaphora

on "Alas," the oxymoron of "dowtefful beleve," and the anrisrmis on "myght" inaantly

transform the verse of the play from dialogue into ly~Ïc. In addition, the Latin refkin and

its rhyrne word, "avexit," occuring in five consecutive stanzas, lead the audience through a

different sort of experience of the movement fiom doubt to faith.

66

In the first three stanzas of Thomas's speech, it is "dowte" that "avexit", as Thomas

recounts the Passion of Christ and the history of his own doubts: "1 tnistyd no talys bat

were me told" (N-Town 38/369), In the fourth stanza, however, the verb takes a different

subject, in conjunction with a startling iconographie moment:

Thus be my grett dowte oure feyth may we preve.

Behold my blody hand, to feyth bat me avexit;

Be syght of bis myrroure, fiom feyth not remeve

Quod mortuus et sepultus nunc resurrexit- (N-Town 3 8/3 8 1 -3 84)

The play's editor giosses "avexit" as "vexes, distresses" and harasse^,"'^ but its derivation

is fiorn the past tense of the Latin "adveho" and would mean "conveyed to a place." In

this sudden shifi of subject, this meaning seems to be in the forefiont, as Thomas declares

that his bloody hand has carried him over to faith. Furthemore, in one of the drama's

most explicit statements of purpose, Thomas tells the audience to make of him their

"myrroure," and afEirms the Gregorian view of this episode, an m a t i o n that he repeats

in the following stanza: "For be my grett dowte oure feyth may we prevdA3ens all bo

eretykys bat speke of Cryst shame" (N-Town 3 8/3 87-388). In making such affirmations,

Thomas is speaking in the voice of the church as a whole, rather than solely as a character

in a drarnatic situation. E. Catherine DUM has argueci that such a function gives the

character who plays it "a detachment fkom the immediate dramatic event that serves to

distance the turmoil or cod i c t or even cornic action and envelop these things in a

'" N-TOWH P f q vol. 2, 560.

luminous veil."'" Such an interpretation of either the Towneley or the N-Town play

ignores the panegyric, pathetic appeal that the playwrights are so clearly attempting. It

does, however, rightly suggest that the kind of speech typified by these two plays'

concluding monologues goes beyond the immediate dramatic moment; indeed, in bringins

both physicality and pathos into a moment of direct audience address, they equate the

moment of Thomas's revelation with the experience of &ective piety as a whole. They

suggest, therefore, the terrns upon which a Christian rhetoric can be based without

sacrificing either eloquence or certainty.

This Christian rhetoric is most fUy explored, and given perhaps its most striking

mandate, in the York cycle. The York play of "The Incredulity of Thomas" (York 41)

Iacks the Aposties' initiai doubt, focussing innead upon their near-despair; nonetheless, the

play treats the same key issues as its Towneley analogue. The issue of corporeality is

central to the play:

Johtr ies A p r i t e it is, bat trowe 1 right,

Al1 bus appered here to orne sight.

1 ame Criste, ne drede sou no@:

Her may 3e se

De same body bat has you bought

Vppon a tre (York 41/37-38, 45-48, rny emphasis).

L29 E. Catherine Dunn, "The Literary Style of the Towneley Plays," Amerzcan Bertedicrine Reriew. 20 ( 1 969): 483.

The issue of natural o r supematural resurrection is of less concem; it is alluded

to by Thomas, but not answered with any argument:

W m a s He bat was so fblly slaine,

Howe schulde he rise?

Thomas, tmly he is on lyve

Pat tholede be Jewes his flessh to r s e ,

He lete vs fele his woundes £jue,

Oure lorde verray (York 4 1/13 7- 142).

Nonetheless, Jacobus's immediate retùsal to argue on Thomas's terms, and his quick and

unsolicited report of physical evidence, imply the same conclusion that the Towneley play

rnakes more explicit: that argument does not work; the eloquent body of Christ itself is

the only possible proof Additionally, the play ends, as it must, with the same statement by

Christ that "Blissed be they euerd Pat trowis haly in my nsing ri&/ And saw it neuere"

(York 4 1 / 1 90- 192): that in the absence of physicai evidence, faith must intervene.

In the York Cycle, Thomas is central t o another episode, however: one in which

the Virgin appears to him after her death, comforting him in his despair. This episode is

unique to the York Cycle; it does not appear even in the N-Town manuscript, with its

elaborate play of the death and assumption of the Virgin.'"

It is possible that the episode appeared in sorne form in the Towneley and Chester cycles. The former cycle seems to be missing some form of Marian play, the removal of which accounts for the rnissing fin page of the "Judgement" play; the latter cycle is certainly rnissing a play of the Assurnption, though we have no information on its exact scope. See Martin Stevens, "The Missing Parts of the Towneley Cycle," Specirfum

69

The Vigin's appearance to Thomas was, nonetheless, a popdarly depicted subject

in the visuai arts, fiom the fim haif of the fourteenth cennrry throughout the Meenth.131

The legend may date fiom as far back as the ninth century, but its most cornmonly known

source"' is probably the bnef account in the Legerdo aurea that reads:

Thomas, however, was absent [fiom her Assumption], and when he came

back refused to believe. Then suddenly the girdle that had encircled her

body feil intact into his hands, and he realized that the Blessed Virgin had

really been assumed body and soul. '" T h e issues surroundhg the Assumption of the Vugin, and Thomas's unique experience of

it, are not udike the issues smounding the Resurrection of Christ. Primary to the story is

the issue of camality, the claim that M r y was taken up bodily and not merely in spirit.

Gibson calls the doctrine of Mary's bodily assumption "the apotheosis of the incarnational

preoccupations of the culture.n1Y ifthat is so, then its York play is completely in line with

both the plays of the Resurrection and the popular piety of the culture in which it

45 (1970): 254-265, and Records of Emiy English Drama: Chester 20, 23-24,37-38.

13' Marina Warner, A lotte of A ll Her Sex: me Myth and the Cult of the Virgin M a y ( 1976; repr. New York: Vinrage, 1983) 278.

"' See Carolyn Wail, "The Apocryphal and Historical Backgrounds of 'The Appearance of Our Lady to Thomas' (Play XLVI of the York Cycle)," hfediaeval St~~dies 30 (1970): 172-192.

13' "Thomas autem cum abesset et rediens credere recusaret, subito zonam qua corpus eius precintum nierat ab aere recipit illesam ut uel sic intellegeret totaliter fuisse assumpta." Jacobus, Legemh awea vol. 2, 786; Golden Legend vol. 2, 82.

l U Gibson, 7heater of Devotion 167.

appeared.

Rhetoricaily, the play accomplishes its goai rather differently fiom the York cycle's

play of Christ's appeafiillce to Thomas, however. That play, as we have seen, is re!atively

brief, containing little argument by Thomas o r the disciples, and little opportunity for non-

visual proofs to be tried. The York play of the Assumption, by contrast, begins with a

long monologue by Thomas, plungïng the audience, at first, àîrectly into a realm of highiy

wrought verbiage.

He teched fiiii trewe, but Be tuauntes were tened.

For he reproued ber pride bai purposed barne preste

To mischeiue hym, with malis in bere mynde haue Dei menyd,

And to accuse hyrn of cursednesse De WtXs has caste.

Ther rancoure was raised, no renke might it reste,

Dai toke hym with treasoune, bat turtill of treuthe,

Dai fedde hym with flappes, with fersnesse hyrn feste,

To nigge hym, to riffe hym; ber reyned no rewthe.

Vndewly bei demed hym:

Pei dusshed hym, bei dasshed hym,

Pei lusshed hym, bei lasshed hym,

Dei pusshed hym, bei passhed hym,

Al1 sorrowe Dei saide bat it serned hym (York 45/27-39).

Thomas's opening monologue consists of eight such stanzas, knined together by

alliteration, a complex rhyme scheme, and concatenation. The last of these is a device

often signalling spintual or emotional desperation in the York cycle; for instance, it occurs

in Adam's monologue &er his f d in York 6177-122, and the two pilgrims' dialogue en

route to Emmaus in York 4011-67. Thomas also calls attention to his language itseff by

the use of nonsense words such as "dusshed," "lusshed," and "passhed," which seem to

belong in this stanza for purely aura1 reasons.

The compfexity, length, and opacity of Thomas's speech, which is iittle more in

content than a retelling of events, can be weaqing to an audience. Those who witnessed

this play performed in Toronto in 1998 as part of the entire York cycle seemed imtated by

it; one audience member told me that he had found Thomas infunating, whiie much of the

discussion on this play aftenvards seemed to be centred on trying to fïnd some other use

for this monologue than a purely dramatic one."'

Nonet heless, if played sympathetically, Thomas's monologue may serve the same

function as those of Adam and of the pilgrims to Emmaus: to poxtray the desperation of a

pilgrim who has lost his comection with the grace that makes hope possible. It is no

accident, perhaps, that Thomas is once again focussing on the death of Christ. Although

he has himself been witness to the Resurrectioh he is again locked into the feeling that

"My lorde and my luffe, 100, fi111 lowe is he lapped" (York 4513). Even his remembrance

- of the Resurrection gives him linle comfoxt in itself

To mene of his rnanhode my mynde was al1 meued.

135 Among others, the possibilities suggested were that the speech was meant as a

cover for the setting up of the pageant wagon; that it was a visible way to convey Thomas from one station to another; and that it was not meant to be spoken in its entirety but resembled a piano vamp, able to be exited whenever the rest of the cast was ready to begin.

But bat reuerent redused me be resoune and be li3t.

So sone he assendid

Mi felaus in feere

Ware sondered sere,

If bai were here

Mi myrthe were mekill arnendid (York 498 1 -82, 87-9 1 ).

In Thomas's cornplaint, there is more than mere loneliness; the sundering of the Apostles

here may be likened to a sundering of the body o f the Church. The metaphor of Church as

body is made numerous tirnes in the Pauline epistles, with such statements as, "For the

body is one and hath many members; and al1 the members of the body, whereas they are

many, yet are one body: so also is Christ" (1 Cor 12: 12),'" or, "Now you are the body o f

Christ and memben of member" (1 Cor 12:27).13' Augustine expands the metaphor,

making a cmcial distinction between apostolic and post-apostolic experience:

This the disciples did not see, narnely, the Church throughout al1 nations,

beginning at Jenisalem. They saw the Head and they believed the Head in

the matter of the Body. By this which they saw they believed that which

they did not see. We too are like to them; we see something which they

did not see, and we do not see something which they did see. What do we

"Sicut enim corpus unum est, et membra habet multa, ornnia autem membra corporis cum sint multa, unum tamen corpus sint: ita et Christus."

13' "Vos autem estis corpus Christi, et membra de membro."

see which they did not? The Church throughout di nations. What is it we

do not see, which they saw? Christ present in the flesh. As they saw Him

and believed conceming the Body, so do we see the Body; let us beiieve

conceming the Head. Let what we have respectively seen help us. The

sight of C hrist helped them to beiieve in the iùture Church; the sight of the

Church helps us to believe that Chria has risen.13'

The appearance of Mary to Thomas serves for the character the same fiinction that the

visible Church served for the faiffil medieval Christian: it reinforces the understanding of

Christ's resurrection and universalizes the doctrine.

When Mary first appears in this play, with a burst of angelic song, Thomas looks

upon the si& and speaks in terms that echo the sayings of Joseph and the shepherds at

the Nativity:

O glorious God what glemes are glydand,

1 meve in my mynde what may Pis bemene?

1 see a berde borne in blisse to be bidand

With aungelis companye, comeley and clene.

13* "Hoc nondum videbant discipuli: Ecclesiarn per omnes gentes, incipientibus ab Jerusalem, nondum videbant. Caput videbant: et de corpore capiti credebant. Per hoc quod videbant, quod non videbant credebant. Similes iIlis sumus et nos: videmus aliquid, quod ipsi non videbant: et non videmus aliquid, quod ipsi videbant. Quid nos videmus, quod ipsi non videbant? Ecclesiam per omnes gentes. Quid non videmus, quod ipsi videbant? Christum in came constituturn. Quomodo illi iiiam videbant, et de corpore credebant: sic nos corpus videmus, de capite credamus. Invicem nos adjuvent visa nostra. Adjuvat eos visus Christus, ut futuram Ecclesiarn crederent: adjuvat nos visa Ecclesia, ut Christum resurexisse credamus." Augustine, Sermon 116, vi, 6. Paaoiogra Lutirïa, ed. Mgne, vol. 38.659; Przywara, Atqpsth~e Synfhesis 223.

74

(York 4511 18-121)

Tyino together the Incarnation with the resurredon not only of Christ's body but also of

the body of Christ's followers, Thomas moves into the same sort of panegyric mode o f

speech that in other contexts he uses to address the risen Christ, based this tirne on

aflaphora on the phrase "1 thank pe" (York 45/170-182); he then proceeds to make his

way to the Apostles, as he has before. His conversation with thern, however, proves to

the direct opposite of his conversation with the Apostles in the earlier plays. It is not

Thomas but the Apostles who are in despair, and it is not the Apostles but Thomas who

must supply proof

Thomas's conversation with the Apostles bnngs up the same issues of proof and of

the Limits of verbal argument when dealing with mystery as the play of Christ's

appearance, but it also reaches a rather dBerent conclusion.

Petrus Bat bou corne not to courte here vnkyndynys Bou kid vs,

Oure treuth has of-tumed vs to tene and to trayne-

Pis yere hast bou rakid, Pi reuth wolde not ridde vs,

For witte bou wele bat worthy is wente on hir waye.

In a depe denne dede is scho doluen bus daye,

Marie bat maiden and modir so rnilde.

;Inornas 1 wate weie iwis.

Jacobtrs Thomas, do way.

Andreas Itt forste no3t to fiayne hym, he will not be filde.

Thomas Sin, with hir haue 1 spoken

Johtnes

Thomas

Peirtrs

Lattar banne yee.

Pat may not bee.

Yis, knelyng on kne.

Panne tite can bou telie vs some token?

(York 45/235-247)

Questioning the erhos of the one who brings miraculous news, regarding the passions of

those who are receiving the news, the demand for proof: al1 of these are the same issues

that surround Christ's appearance, and Thomas resolves them in a sunilar way: by physical

rather than verbal proof.

Thomas Lo Pis token hl1 tristy x h o toke me to take youe.

Jacobtrs A, Thomas, whare gate bou bat girdili so gode?

7homas Sirs, my message is meuand some mirthe for to make youe,

For founding flesshly 1 fande hir till hir faire foode.

(York 45/248-25 1)

It may seem as if this play merely repeats the issues already addressed by the play of

Christ's appearance. Adrnittedly, in the York cycle the play of Christ's appearance is

quite brief, so that a revisiting of them may not seem out of place. However, the end

result of this play is quite different from that of any play of Christ's appearance because of

a key metaphor that Thomas makes at its conclusion.

The lorde of al1 lordis in lande schd he lede youe

Whillis 3e trauell in trouble De trewthe for to teche.

With fiewte of oure feithe in firîhe schall we fede youe

For bat laboure is lufsome ilke lede for to leche.

Nowe 1 passe 60 youre presence pepull to preche,

To lede bame and lere bame be lawe of oure lorde.

As 1 saide, vs muste asoundre and sadly enserche

Ilke contré to kepe dene and knytte in O corde

Off oure faithe.

Pat fielye foode

Pat died on rode

W1th mayne and moode

He grath yowe be gydis fidl grath.

(York 451300-3 1 2)

When Thomas speaks of encircling, keeping clean, knitting in one cord, he verbally

equates the Apostles themselves with Mary's girdle; conversely, he suggests that Mary, in

throwing down her girdle, symbolically gave him the Church.

Mary, of course, had symbolked the Church for centurîes by the time of these

plays,'" and di does, but the implications in this case are quite particular. In this play is

ponrayed Augustine's insistence that "the sight of the Church helps us believe that Christ

has risen";'" the identification of Mary, the Apodes, the Church, and corporeal existence

'39 Wamer, A h e of All Her Sex 105- 106.

"adjuvat nos visa Ecclesia, ut Christun resurexisse medamus." Augustine, Semo 1 16 (vi. 6), Migne, Patrologia Latina vol. 3 8, 65 9; Przywara, Augnstine S'thesis 223.

is subsequently what rnakes Christian rhetoric and persuasion-the Church's particulas

fûnctions--possible. The equation is the same one that Augustine makes in saying that

"Mary gave binh to your Head, the Church gives birth to you. For she also is both Wgin

and mother.""' While during the Resurrection play the problem depicted was only

resolvable through the direct revelation of the risen God, at this point the mission of the

Church becornes clear: "Nowe 1 passe 6ro youre presence De pepuU to precheJïo Iede

bame and Iere barne be lawe of oure lorde" (York 45/304-305), says Thomas. No longer

is his own faith in question; he and the other Aposties now fÙUy have the power t o engage

in the evangeliration of others: a rhetorical act of moving the emotions of listeners in such

a way as to iead them to identification with the body of the Church, with the body of

Christ, and ~ 4 t h each other.

This form of Christian rhetoric is both simi1a.r to and different fkom Augustine's

way of deaiing with the constant problems of Christian rhetoric. The Auguainian view

declares that Christian rhetoric is both possible and needfùl, but downplays logical

argument in favour of the speaker's e f h and the apodeictic proof of Scripture.'" It also,

as Fish argues, emphasises its own ultimate inadequacy and the need to tum itself over to

God. The plays of Thomas graphically illustrate the reasons for the lack of ernphasis on

logk and admit the frustration of language and reason, but also, in their various ways,

141 "Caput vestrum peperit Maria, vos Ecclesia. Nam ipsa quoque et mater et virgo est." Augustine, Senno 192 (ii. 2)- Patralogia Latina, ed. Migne 3 8.10 1 1 ; Prtywara, Az~gr~st ine Sjmthesis 244.

"" George A. Kennedy, CIasscaf Rheforic Laid 11s Chrisrian and Sectdm Tradition from Arlcier1t to Mdern Times (C hapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1 980) 1 5 8.

78

point towards an incarnational kind of rfietoric: one based upon a pathetic response to the

apodeictic proof of corporeality. The emphasis aiso upon the supernatural nature of ali of

the events portrayed both necessitates and reinforces that pathetic response: it is precisely

the wonder of a miracle that engages ïhomas, and the plays as a whole, to move into the

panegyric mode, in which an audience's passions are directly engaged.

The plays of Thomas and the form of rhetonc they exempiirj,, then, are emblernatic

of the "incarnational ae~thetic"'~ of late medieval piety in generai; they are a h , however,

instances in which the assened certainties of faith and the intellectual dynarnic of rhetoric

meet and become harmonized. If they do not convince fiom a logical point of view, their

failure to do so is made a vimie rather than a flaw: their depiaion of the failure of reason

in the face of miracle is replaced by direct appeal, by the visible form of Christ, and

perhaps most strongly by the self-criîical dramatic narrative form itself, which gains "the

demonstrative potential inherent in logical predication"lu through its own inadequacy and

the inevitable intervention of God.

"' Gibson, Irneaîer of Devotiort 1 - 1 8.

l u Dixon, Polliticke Courtier 32.

Chapter 3

Mary Magdalene, Ethos, Decorum, and the Conversion of Language

The plays of Thomas not only show the limitations of argumentative rhetoric but

also seem to indicate a kind of sacramental rhetoric, one based on @os and to some

degree dependant on the person or e h s of the saint. They suggest that such a rhetonc

can be an effective tool in reinforcing the audience's sense of itselfas part of the sacred

cornrnunity of the Church-of those who believe in Christ and act accordingly. Yet at the

same time, they aiso question the usefiilness of ethos as a means of persuasion.

Of ail the characters whose ethos is questioned in those plays the most notable is

Mary Magdalene, who brings the news of Christ's resurrection to the Apostles. The

Digby play of Mary Maghiene aiso concentrates on the issues of ethos and of saintly

rhetonc, but accomplishes its task differently from the Thomas plays. Recognizing that

Mary Magdalene begins as one of the worldliest of sinners, the play's concem with

authonty and sovereignty nonetheless l a d s it to show her ethm in a favourable light by

interpreting her in a way that is different from severai of the traditions surrounding her

legend. While such reinterpretation c m lead (and has led) to modem misunderstandings

of the play, it need not have confùsed a late medievai audience. Indeed, it is precisely by

appealing to the sensibilities of a late medieval audience that the Digby M m Magrtileene

creates a powerful character, whose erhos as a preacher leads to the power to realign

fdlen language, shifting it away fiom compt earthly authority and placing it in the s e ~ c e

of divine and ecclesiastical authori ty, even as Mary Magdalene h e r d f is transformeci from

80

a worldly (yet not inherently vicious) sinner who obeys the wrong m e r s to a symbol of

the Church subject to Christ.

Mary Magdahe's preaching career is portrayed in terms of this conflict between

worldly and holy aiiegiances, particularfy in her encounters with the King of Maneilles.

The Digby Mary Magdalene uses al1 the means of persuasion she an, but primary to her

success is her e t h , including her physical appearance. The rather more than usually

virtuous ethos of the character helps to lay the foundation for the legitimacy of her later

preaching, much of which also concems the allegiance of the minds and souls of others.

While the Digby playwright does, as we shall see, stress her need for God's grace, he also

stnves to show her as a worthy vesse1 and vehicle of that grace, by establishing fiom the

beginning an appropriately promising moral character.

"Mary Magdalene," Heien Meredith Garth writes, "was ranked with the Apostles

by the Church and the Acta Smtctorum calls her [...] 'the Apode to the ~ p o s t i e s ' . " ~ ~

When the Digby playwright composed his spectacular play of the saint's iife, it was central

to his needs to create a character worthy of such a title. Yet his accompiishment in doing

so has not always been sufficiently appreciated; in paxticular, his manipulation of erhos,

pathos, and other rhetorical devices has largely escaped critical notice, or, when it has

attracted such notice, has not received sufficient analysis.

Robert H. Bowers, for instance, has written problematically and almost uniquely

" Helen Meredith Gart h, &int bf' MugabIetre in Meedrevai Literatwe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins P, 1950) 98. Garth's own italics.

81

on the Disby playwright's use of &comm; he focuses pacticularly on the tavem scene.'"

He deerns dus scene "an anistic fa i l~re ," '~ but dweUs on it at length nevertheless; in the

process, he provides a fairly soiid argument that the scene is written in the rhetorical "high

style," and furthemore that its setting is ''an upper-class London tavem similar to a

modem Bavarian weimtube7' [sic] and "no working-class alehou~e."~" He also notes thaï

such features are perfectly in keeping with the writing of hagiography.

Nonetheless, Bowers fails to draw fiom these observations the conclusion that

such devices rnight have a genuine function in this play. He guesses merely that they are

"employed by the author to keep vitaiity at a safe distance from the rnanor, and to avoid

serious consideration of the human condition."lm Heaving a sigh of regret that the Digby

plapright did not do things as the Wakefield Master ~lid, '~' Bowers asserts, without

evidence or analysis, that drama is, and must always properly be, in the low style, because

drama is, and must always properly be, "the presentation of an immediate, present

happening rather than a retrospective, nostalgie narrative of past event~.""~ Any deviation

'" robe^ H. Bowers, "The Tavern Scene in the Middle English Digby Play of Mary Magdalene, " AIl These fo Teach: Essays in ffonor of C.A. Robertson, ed. Roben A. Bryan et al. (Gainesville: U of Fiorida P, 1965) 15-32.

IJ8 Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 15.

149 Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 27.

"O Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 30. 1 am not sure which manor Bowers means.

15' Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 30.

lS' Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 29.

from "the vivid speech of sweating humanity,"ln he implies, results merely in '"closet-

drarna' [. ..] with the best of intention^."'^ Bowers therefore deems the scene a failure for

violating deconrm f ie r di.

Bowers's dismissai of the Digby playwright 's use of decomm f d s to take into

account the possible drarnatic fwictions of the high style on the medieval stage. And yet,

latent in Bowers's article are the seeds of such an anaiysis. He is quite right to assert that

the play is wntten largely in aureate and high diction; he is aiso correct in observing that

the settings for Mary Magdaiene's early life are upper-class: not only the well-appointed

tavem but also the castie in which she is k s t introduced to the audience. He is surely

justified in noting that hagiographical w-riting tends to foiiow such patterns of decomm.

But he does not reaiize that these patterns are precisely the elements that d o w the

audience to interpret the efhos, or moral character, of Mary Magdalene, and therefore the

elements that are crucial to establishing Mary Magdaiene as a credible and compelling

orator for and before a Iate medieval audience.

The use of the hi& style theoretically irnplies certain characteristics both in the

audience and in the speaker: the audience, it impiies, is capable, culpable, and possibly

unwilling; the speaker is gave, authoritative, and superior. Augustine argues, for

instance, that

when action must be taken and we are addressing those who ought to take

it but are unwiihg, then we must speak of what is important in the grand

lS3 Bowers, "Tavem Scenew' 22.

154 Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 32.

style, the style suitable for moving minds to action. [...] [One speaks] in the

grand style, if antagonistic minds are being dnven to change their

attitude. Is5

The Rhezorica ad Heren~tium notes, moreover, that the high style consists not only of

irnpressive words but also of "impressive thoughts [.. .] such as are used in Amplification

and Appeal to Pity." 1% The use of the high style, in theory, corresponds both to the

Ciceronian purpose, movere,'" and to grandness of meaning and subject-matter; in its

impressive way it portrays a superior speaker conveyïng great things to a reluctant or

othenvise dficult audience.

The high style also, however, implies a certain deconrm, and thus a particular

efhos. Decorum, fiom classical writers on, has usudy been seen as unity; as Chaucer

wTites, "The wordes moote be cosyn to the dede.""' In other words, arktocratic or high

concems mum be written in high language. ~ o w e r s ' ~ ~ notes that in the late Middle Ages

such a style was ofien, in practice, used both in devotional works and in aristocratie or

lS5 "Cum ver0 aliquid agendum est et ad eos loquimur qui hoc agere debent nec tamen volunt, tunc ea quae magna sunt dicenda sunt granditer et ad flectendos animos congruenter. 1. - .] granditer si adversus inde animus ut convenatur irnpellitur." Augustine, De docnina Chrisfiana iv.xix.38, 244-245.

1% "graves sententiae quae in amplificatione et commiseratione tractantur." ad Here~tnirrrn iv.viii. 1 1 , 254-25 5 .

lS7 See also Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rheroric mtd Poetic (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1959) 68-

lJ8 Chaucer, "The Generai Prologue" 742, n e Canterbury Taies, in me Riverside C h c e r 3 5 .

Is9 Bowers, "Tavern Scene" 24.

courtiy works and passages: for example,

O ruby, r u b d j d in the passyoun

AU of thi sone, arnong haue us in mynde,

O aedfast dyarnaunt of duracyonlM

or,

The gentyl faucoun, that 6 t h his feet distrayneth

The kynges hand; the hardy sperhauk eke,

The quayles foo; the merhoun, that payneth

Hymself fi l ofte the larke for to seke;

There was the douve with hire yën meke;

The jelous Swan, ayens his deth that syngeth;

The oule e k that of deth the bode bryngeth.16'

The matching of both devotional and upper-class sensibilities with the high style is not

merely a literary convention for its own sake, however. Lanham writes,

[D]ecomrn as a stylistic criterion finally locates itself entirely in the

beholder and not in the speech or text. No textual pattern per se is

decorous or not. [...] Like the human visual system, rhetorical deconrm is a

bag of tricks which constitutes for us a worId that it then presents as "just

John Lydgate, "Ballade at the Reverence of Our Lady," Lydgafe 's Minor Poems, ed. H. N. MacCracken, vol. 1, EETS es 107 (Oxford: M o r d üP, 1910) 258.

16' GeoEey Chaucer, The Padiment of Fowls 3 3 7-343, The Riverside Chaucer 390.

out thereyy awaituig our passive mepiion.'"

This "bag of tricks" is key to what Huizinga has called the "need to fiame emotions within

fixed forms." This need, Huizinga argues, becomes directed towards the shaping of a

society based on mutual agreement of experience and unmarreci by misdirected

outbursts. '63

When, therefore, the Digby piaywright uses a style suited to devotional and

aristocratie sensibilities, he is not violating some a priori decorum suited to drarna, but

rather s i g m n g the nature of the society constituted by his play; he si-des also the

character or ethos of the people who are to inhabit that socim. Furthemore, he signals

to the audience the response he expects them to have towards those characters. Thus,

when the playwright uses the high style for Mary Magdalene, he not only pomys her as

upper-class, but also uses the style to create a complex web of assumptions about her

behaviour, her environment, her credibiiity, and her possible motives: in short, her ethoda

The portrayd of Mary Magdalene as a woman who preached did, after d l , have

definite implications in late medieval England- On the one hand, silence was widely

regarded as one of the primary womaniy virtues, and femde speech as dangerous;

according to some contemporary commentators, the Vugin Mary had spoken little, and

only discreetly, while Eve's taiking had been a primary cause of humanity's fail fkom grace:

16' Lanham, Ha~dlist of Rhetorical Tenns 45-46.

163 Huizinga, A r r f t m of the Miride Ages 1 28- 129.

l* Compare Hauser: "[:ln accepting the playwright's terrns, we actually create a world with its own matrix of thoughts, emotions, and values as a proper motivationai basis for action. " Ir~trodt~cti~~~ to Rhrtorical Theory 1 89.

86

Eve, oure oldest moder in paradise, held long tale with the eddre [...] and

bi hire t a m g the fend understod hire febylnes and hire unstabilnes, and

fond therby a way to bryng hir to confiisioun. Our lady s e p t Mary did on

an othere wyse. Sche tolde the aungel no tale, bot asked hym discretely

thing that she knew not hir-self. Ffolow therfore our lady in discret

spekyng and heryng, and not cakeling Eve that both spake and herd

unwisely. Oure lady seyn Mary [...] was of so Litel speche that nowere in

the gospel we fjmden of hir speche but iiii tymes, and tho were wordes of

a e t discretion and grete myghte.16' C

Yet this sermon does not af!Erm that no female speech can be effective; it does state,

however, that the effêctiveness of female speech depends greatly on the ethos of the

speaker. In the drama, such works as the East Anglian Mary Plcs, portray the Virgin as

speaking a great deal indeed, and also as teaching the audience and her fellow characters.

It is in this latter tradition that the Digby playwright places his female preacher, but in

order to do so, he must meet particular conditions: her ethos must be shown worthy, her

beliefs orthodox, and her aiiegiances correct.

Thus, the legend of Mary Magdalene's prostitution must be played down. This

task is difficult, given both the history of the character and the strictness of medievai

E n e s h attitudes, by which any woman at variance fiom normative ide& rnight be IabeUed

' 6 5 BL MS. Roy. 8. C. i, fol. 124, quoted in Owst, Lirerature mdPulpir 387.

87

a ~ h 0 r e . l ~ ~ Yet con- to what many cntics of the play have asuimed, the Digby M q

Magdzlene does not strongly present its heroine as a pronitute. It is true that she

succumbs to woridly temptation, but her MI trom grace is a result of the sins that she

herser narnes: pride, wrath, and envy (68 1 -683),16' not primady as a result of lechery or

geed.

The usual picture of Mary Masdalene is weIl known. Susan Haskins describes it

succinctly as

a beautfil woman with long golden hair, weeping for her sins, the very

incamation of the age-old equation between ferninine beauty, sexudity and

sin [.. .] the repentant prostitute who, hearing the words of Jesus Christ,

repented of her sinful past and henceforth devoted her life and love to

him. la

This picture was at least as common in the Middle Ages as it is today. It appears in

medieval art, iiterature, and drama, and was vital to most interpretations ofthe saint. The

Benediktbeuern Passion PIay, for instance, gives one of the most vivid pictures of the

fallen Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene first appears in the Benediktbeuern play in Jerusalem, just afler

166 P.J. P. Goldberg, "Women," F@eertthCentury Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval Englmld, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994) 127.

16' Al1 references to M q Magdcilene are fkom me Late Medieval Religious P lqs of Baileian MSS. Digby 133 and e Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall Jr. EETS O.S. 283 (Mord: Oxford UP, 1982).

'" Susan Haskins, Mary Mag&letr Myth mid Metaphor (London: Harper, 1994) 3.

the entry of ksus. She be&s a rhyming song, in sharp conuast to the prose that has

preceded her entrante, and shows no end of delight in sensual pleasures:

The world's pleasure is sweet and agreeable,

Its society is delightfùl and eiegant.

There are ailurements of the world for which 1 long

To feel passionate excitement, not to shun its wanton joys.

Ill lay down my M e for worldly enjoyment;

1'11 serve the cause of temporal pleasure.

111 pamper my body, caring for nothing else;

I'U deck it out in an array of briiliant finery (23-30).'"

After decking herself out accordingly, she flirts with the audience in German, repeating

three times, "Hey, look at rne,Nou young men./Let me give you pleasure" (43-45).170

There is no doubt that this wornan is motivated primarily by lust in her actions, and that

her initial appeal to the audience is sensual.

Unfominately, such sources can Iead one to read into the Digby play motivations

and actions that the text does not strongly indicate. For instance, ClifEord Davidson

16' Trans. Medieval Drarna, ed. David Beiington (Boston: Houghton, 1975) 202-224. The original reads, "Mundi delectatio dulcis est et grata;/Eius conuersatio suavis et ornata./Mundi sunt delicie, quibus estuareNoIo, nec lasciuiam eius deuitare./Pro mundano gaudio uitam tenninabo;/Bonis temporalibus ego rnilitabo./Nil curans de cetens corpus procurabo,Nariis coloribus illud peromabo." Karl Young, 7he D r m a of the Medieval Chrrrch, vol. 1 ( M o r d : Clarendon P, 1933) 520.

170 Trans. Bevington, Medieval Droma. "Seht rnich anJiungen man./Lat mich ev gevallen." Young, vol. 1, 52 1.

~uggests'~' that the playwright may have been aware of the tradition, found in Mirk, that

Mary Magdalene had been engaged to Saint John the Evangeiist, and that her self-centred

fùry over his subsequent calhg to Christ was the occasion for her falling h to sin.

However, although one of the play's possible sources, the South Englsh LegertCiirry,'R

mentions this tradition,ln the Digby playwright never dudes to it though it would not

have been any dficulty for him to do so. Since it cannot be assumeci that the audience as

a whole would have known that tradition (though some of its members may have), this

tradition cannot be seen as a strong motivating force behind the Digby Mary Magdalene's

f d nom grace. It is, of course, possible to interpret the character according to that

tradition, but not necessary. In other words, the Digby playwright seems to play down,

not emphasise, such elements of Mary Magdalene's history.

Indeed, the Digby playwright has ready to hand an alternative explmation for

Mary Magdalene's fali: she is weakened spiritualiy by her grief for the death of her

fathet-? When Lechery asks Mary the reason for her griec she replies, "For my father 1

Clifford Davidson, "The Middle English Saint Play and Its Iconography," nie Saint Play i r ~ Medevai Europe, ed. CLifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 8 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1986) 8 1.

'" Darryll Grantley, "The Source of the Digby Mary MagdaIen," Notes mid Queries 229 (December 1984) 457-459, argues that the South Engiish L e g e n d a ~ is the primary source for the play, yet several details such as punning on the saint's name are not to be found in it, only in the Latin original.

ln Davidson, "Middle English Saint Play7'l 18 11-27 1.

17' As Jacques Rossiaud notes, the loss or lack of a father was often said, in the fifteenth cenniry, to drive young women to immoral behaviour. Medievui Prostitnfion, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (London: Blackwell, 1988) 142.

haue had grett heuynesse-/Whan 1 remembyr, my mynd waxit mort" (454-455)."' It is at

this moment that Lechery succeeds in coaxhg Mary Magdalene out of her cade and into

the tavem. Sidarly, during the scene in the tavern, the gaiiant Corioste-who is actually

Pride disguised (550)-hds it hard to appeal to Mary Magdaiene's sensual nature. Upon

his first attempt, he is rebuffed with the sharp, "Why, syr, wene 3e bat 1 were a kelle?"

(520), and the suspicious, "Qwat cavse bat 3e love me so sodenly?" (523). Even upon

Corioste's invitation to dance, Mary Magdalene replies surprisingly virtuously by the

standards of late medieval moraiity: "Syr, 1 asent in good maner./Go 3e before, 1 sue yow

nere,/For a man at alle tymys beryt reverens" (53 1-533). Finally, it is not true that the

dance is the moment of her fd; cleady Conoste senses that her heart is not in it, for he

quickly says to her, "Now, be my trowth, 3e be wyth other ten" (534). It takes a fùrther

and more intoxicating delight to seduce her-"Soppys in wynne, how love 3e [bas]?"

(536). It seems that this Mary Magdalene falls relatively rel~ctantly."~

Nonetheless, once Mary Magdalene falls, the f d is thorough and seerningly

complete. It is not, after ail, a good man that she obeys in the tavem but a vice. As John

Velz has argued, the issue of sovereignty and authonty is of central importance in this

and the allegiance of characters. and even of language itself, plays a large part in

' " See aiso Marjorie M. Malvem, Venus in Sackçioth: The MagdaIer~ 's Originr ami Me~amorphoses (Carbondale: Southern illinois UP, 1975) 1 16- 1 1 7.

lÏ6 It is notable also that when Mary Magdaiene is visired by the Good Angel and told to repent, "she does not have to be coaxed. Her conversion is sudden-" Malvern, Vernrs in Sackcloth 1 1 8.

I n John W. Velr. "Sovereignty in the Digby Mmy Magdaleze." Comparative Drama 2 (1968): 32-43.

detennining the morality of theïr actions. For instance, when Mary Magdalene awaits her

"valentynys" in her bower (564), she specifically wishes for a lover who "is wom to halse

and kysse" her (57 1 ), echoing Flesh's eariier statement that he must "halse and kysçe" his

spouse Lechery (347). She is clearly of the Flesh's party at this moment. Yet that very

fact, like the allegorical nature of the vice, locates the source of Mary Magdalene's fa11

outside the character herself. It is not her interior e h s , not even her own flesh exactfy,

that is portrayed as compt, but her politicai and personal allegiances.

Funher clifferences between the Digby Mary Magdalene and her analogues are

apparent. Althou@ she is presented not as a prostitute but as an upper-class lady, neither

is she presented as a courtesan. Garth describes one portrayal, in which Jean Michel

makes her

a chatelaine of the Meenth century. She sits at her dressing-table in a

sumptuous boudoir, fidl of pefimes, flowers, and tapestries, and gives

herself over to the rninistrations of her two handmaidens. [.. .] They bring

her her mirror, her fine liquids and her balm, and ail the daintiness to keep

her complexion beautiful and fiesh.'"

Yet, in the Digby play, she is not merely a hi&-born lady, but an inherently vùtuous one:

'" Garth, Sainr :Cfary Mag&Iene 64. Rossiaud also notes that Mary Magdalene was not aiways thought of as a prostitute or courtesan at this time; in fact, her wealthy background was sometimes given as direct evidence that she was neither. Some French preachers describeci her as merely an uncontrolled young woman similar to some daughters of the £ifteenth-century nobility, whose behaviour and manner of dress, it was said, was breaking down the visual distinction between counesans and noble ladies. Medieval Prostizritio~r 140-142. The Digby playwright's heroine seems to have a great deai in common uith such Continental portrayals.

92

one who is worthy of beiig followed not only because of her station but because of her

goodness.

The farnily of Cyrus is fim introduced early in the play, at line forty-nine; in their

initial portrayal, they are worldly, powerful, and self-absorbed. Cyrus hunseifuses the

kind of alliterative boast common to worldly nilers in medieval drama, and indeed,

c o m o n to such characters in the Digby play as Caesar, Pilate, and Herod:

1 commav[n]d yow at onys my hestys to hoId!

Behold my person, glysteryng in gold,

Semeiy besyn of aii other men!

Cyrus is my narne, be clef&s so cold!

1 cornmand yow al1 obedyent to beyn! (52-56).

The three siblings are duly impressed by their father's power, but do not forget to give

thanks to God for their prosperity. Nonetheless, the order in which they thank Cyms and

God is revealing. Lazams says, "Most reuerent father, I thank yow hartely ... Mow, good

Lord, and hys wyll it be,/Gravnt me grace" (85, 89-90). Martha, likewise, says, "0, ye

eood fat hyr of grete degre.. ./to se bat Lordys face/Whan ye xal hens passe!" (1 0 1, 1 08- C

109). Mary is the one s ibhg who thanks God first, and her worldly father second:

Thou God of pes and pryncypail covnsell,

More swetter is hi name ban hony be kynd!

W e thank yow, fathyr, for your gyftys ryall,

Owt of peynys of poverte vs to onbynd (93-96).

A similar contrast takes place when Cyms dies. Both Lazarus and Manha bewail their

93

sadness first, and only belatedly c d on God for help (277-284,29 1-297); Mary, however,

calis on God first.

The inwyttyssymus God bat euyr xal reyne,

Be hys help an sowlys sokor!

To whom it is most nedfûil to curnplayn,

He to bry[n]g vs owt of ower dolor;

He is most mytyest governowre,

From soroyng vs to restryne (285-290).

Such details help to establish MW's natural moral character, contrary to a number of

expectations deriving fiom tradition. Wealthy and upper-class, yet the feast worldly of her

family; tempted to worldhess, sin, and despair, yet not entirely cdpable, this Mary

Magdalene does not escape the sintùl Iife of her legend but is not identified entirely with

sin either

While erhos is classically considered a part of the speech presently being

deli~ered,"~ Augustine pointed out that

More important than any amount of grandeur of style to those of us who

seek to be listeneci to with obedience is the life of the speaker. [. . .A

speaker] shouid seek to live in such a way that he not only gains a reward

for himself but also Qives an example to others, so that bis way of Me

'79 Aristotle. Rhetoric 2.1.

becomes, in a sense, an abundant source of e10quence.'~

Or, as Gregory the Great puts it, ''fis voice penetrates the hearts of tiis hearers the more

readily, if his way of Lûe commends what he says. What he enjoins in words, he will help

to execution by example.""' For a playwright giving the background history of a

preaching character, then, the establishment of efhos fiom the beginning is a l o g i d and

needful technique. For a play that concems conversion not o d y of an upper-class saint

but of a king and queen, and that is deeply concemed with authority throughout, it is

natural that the plapwight should contrast Mary Magdalene's natural efhos with the

political ailegiances of the world.

During Mary Magdalene's preaching career, her erhos, as established from the

begiming, is krther developed; it also continues to be defhed by factors extemai to her

words, in addition to her sermons themselves. One of the decisive factors that establishes

her erhos with others is her physicai appearance. When Mary Magdaiene7s father, Cyrus,

first introduces her to the audience as "Mary, fÙl fayur and ni1 of femynyteY7 (71), he uses a

phrase that will appear two other tirnes. Flesh, in addressing Lechery, refers to her in

sirnilar terms: "flowyr fayrest of femynyte" (423), and the King of Marseilles, in referring

to his d e , refers to her also as "full fayur in hyr femynyte" (943). Such expressions of

lg0 "Habet autem ut oboedientur audiamur quantacumque granditate dictionis rnaius pondus vita dicentis. [...] ita conversatur ut non solum sibi praernium cornparet sed et praebeat aiiis exemplum et sit eius quasi copia dicendi forma vivendi." Augustine, De docirina Christiana iv.xxMi.59-60, 276-277.

"' "Illa narnque uox libentius auditonim cor penetrat, quam dicentis uita commen&t7 quia quod Ioquendo imperat, ostendo adiuuat ut fiat." Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care ii.3, t r am Henry Davis, Ancierrf Christimr Writers 1 1 (Westminster, MD: Newman P, 1950) 48.

beaury do not only refer to worldly womeq howeveq long afker Mary has re-appeared

with her cornpanions, "mqyd as chut woen" (s.d. 992), the Shipman's Boy refers to

her as 'Wothyng butt a fayer damseil" (1 4 1 2)' and the Shipman himseif addresses her as

.'pow fayer woman" (1442). Furthermore, the King of Marseilles first refers to Mary as

"I>ow fayer woman" (1650) only afier she has exchanged clothes with an ange];

previously, he refers to her only scornfùliy, with such epithets as "Thow false lordeyn"

(1464). Clearly, Mary's beauty is a thread that mns throughout the play; what is not clear

at fist is that thread's set of implications.

Mary Magdalene's beauty has always, of course, been a bpvord in Christian

tradition, and femaie beauty a dangerous and arnbiguous trait. Aquinas, in fact, declaresi

that one of the reasons why women should not preackwas "lest men's minds be enticed to

lust ." IR In Bokenham' s Legendjs of Hooly Wummen, lg3 however, Mary Magdalene's

beauty is described both before and after her conversion, and is seen to have different

eEects. Before, her beauty is worldly and seductive, like that of Bathsheba or Su~anna : '~

But also borghoute al bat regyoun

She of naturys yiftys had be soverynte

And passyd aile wurnrnen in excellent bewte,

' " "ne animi horninum aliicantur ad libidinem." Aquinas, Swnma 'Clteoiogictz 2a2ae. 177.2, vol. 45, Prophecy artd Ofher Clmriims, ed. and tram Roland Potter (New York: Blackfiiars, 1970) 132- 133.

'" Osbem Bokenham, Loge@s of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary S . Se jentson, EETS O.S. 206 (London: M o r d UP, 1938).

"' See Haskins, Mmy hfaghien 153; also 2 Kings (2 Sam.) 1 1 and Daniel 13.

For, as it semyd to yche mannes syht,

Feyrer ban she no wumman be myht (5390-5394).

Mer , it is celestid but no less reai in its effect:

And so greth bryhtnesse was in hir face,

That esyere yt was somys compace

In pe cierest day to beholdyn & se

Than be bryhtnesse of hyr beute (6266-6229).

Jacobus de Voragine, also, notes her beauty at two stages in her career, and rnakes

panicular note of the effea of her beauty upon her ability as a preacher. Jacobus writes

that in her early Me, Mary was famed "for her beauty and her riches [...] no less known for

the way she gave her body to plea~ure.""~ He also notes, however, that during her

preachino career in Marseiiies,

she came forward, her manner cairn and her face serene, and with weii-

chosen words cded them away from the cult of idols and preached Christ

fervently to them. AU who heard her were in admiration at her beauty, her

eloquence, and the sweetness of her message.'=

Here, her beauty is porirayed as a rhetorical factor comparable in imponance to both

words and subject-matter, even when that subject matter is, explicitly, Christ. In other

185 "quant0 diuitiis et pulchritudïme [.. .] tanto corpus suum uoluptati substrauit." Jacobus, Leger>cla A w e a vol. 1,629; Golden Legend vol. 1, 375.

1 86 "assurgens uultu placido, facie Serena, lingua disena eos ab ydolomm cultura reuocabat et Chrimm constamissime predicabat. Et admirati sunt uniuersi pre specie, pre facundia, pre dulcedine eloquentie illius." Jacobus, tegenrio Andrea vol. 1, 63 1; Golden Legerrd vol. 1 , 3 76-3 77.

97

words, her beauty is a factor in the overall decorum of her preaching, and is considered a

positive boon to her and to her ability as pracher, saint, and apode. The danger of

female beauty, its seductive, persuasive, or tempting capacity, is here transforrned into a

power for persuasion to goodness.

That a capacity for temptation can be positive is suggested rather openly at the

moment of Mary Magdalene's own conversion. When the Good Angel cornes to her in the

garden and convinces her of her sinfiilness, she bursts out:

A, how be speryt of goodnesse hat promtyt me Pis tyde,

And temtyd me wyth tytyil of trew perQthnesse!

Alas, how bettemesse in my hert doth abyde!

1 am wonddyd wyth werkys of gret dystresse (602-605).

The tenn "temtyd is striking, and is emphasized by the abteration of the Line in which it

appears. In De doctrina chrisiana, Augustine repeated the Ciceronian dictum that the

three goals of rhetoric were to teach, to delight, and to persuade. The States of being that

these goals were to produce in the Listener were, not surprisingly, that s/he was to be

taught, to be pleased, and to consent.'"

So when advocating something to be acted on the Christian orator should

not only touch his iisteners so as to impart instruction, and delight them so

as to hold their attention, but also move them so as to conquer their

M a t is somewhat striking, though by no means coincidental, is that these three goals

correspond exactiy with what Augustine elsewhere describes as the three states of

temptation to sin. In Sermor~e Domini in monte, Augustine describes the three steps of

temptation as foliows: "For there are three thuigs which go to complete sin: the

suggestion of it, the taking pleasure in it, and the consenting to it."'" The pardel is

unmistakable: in temptation and in rhetorical experiences in generai, there come, first,

awareness, second, feeling, and third, consent. The lack of any one of these elernents

makes the attempt at persuasion a failure; Augustine says,

So the speaker who is endeavouring to give conviction to something that is

good should despise none of these three aims-of instmcting, delighting,

and moving.lgO

Furthemore, the presence of these paralIel triads in both a work on rhetoric and a

description of psychological faculties suggests that Augustine saw a similarity between the

structure of persuasion and the structure of a human being.

There is a dserence, however, in the particular causes of each stage of persuasion,

188 "Oportet igitur eloquentem ecclesiasticum, quando suadet aliquid quod agendum

est, non solum docere ut instruat et delectare ut teneat verum etiam flectare ut vincat." De doctrina Christiarzu iv.xiii.29, 23 2-23 3.

189 "Nam tria sunt quibus impletur peccatum, suggestione, delectatione et consentione." Augustine, "Sennone Domini in monte," Opera omnia Vol. 14, ed. D.A.B. Caillau and D.M.N.S. Guillon (Paris, 1838) i.xii.33, 162; "Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount," Works Vol. 8, ed. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh, 1872) 26.

"Qui ergo nititur dicendo quod bonum est, nihil illorum tnum spernens-ut scilicet doceat, ut delectet, ut flectat." De dochirra Chrisfiana iv.xvii.34, 238-23 9.

depending on whether the fina! object be sin or doctrine. In the case of sin, Augustine

identifies the causes of the stage of awareness as being either memory or the bodily senses,

stirnulated 'by a fleeting and rapid i-e., a temporary, movement of b~dies."'~' in contra*

the same stage in the case of doctrine "resides in the subject-matter of our discourse,"'"

in other words, in the raw subject matter of Scripture and the exposition thereof

Similady, the cause of delight in the case of sin is said to be "the camd ap~et i te ," '~~ while

in the case of doctrine it is a rational response to eloquence in speech and in logic.'"

Finally, the cause of consent in the case of sin is the reason's submission to the carnal

appetite,19' whiie in the case of doctrine it is the reason's consent to the speech that it

hearsl% The chief difference, it will appear, is that the learnuig of tme doctrine is

basically a rationai response in ail three stages, while temptation to sin is the subordination

of reason to anunal urges. Again, the clifference between goodness and sin lies largely in

the direction of one's obedience.

Although Mary Magdalene's preachuig career might be said properly to begin with

her announcernent of the empty tomb to the Apodes, the main event of legend is her

lgl "Iubrico et volubili, hoc est, temporali corponim motu." "Sermo DoMni in Monte" i.xii.34, 163, "Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount" 27.

'% "in rebus est constituta quas dicimus," De d e i n a Christhna iv.xii.27, 228-229.

'" "in appetitu autem carnali," "Sennone Domine in Monte" i.xii.34, 163, ""Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount" 27.

195 "Sennone Domine in Monte" i.xii.34, 163, "Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount" 27.

conversion of the King of Marreilles. The paganism of Marseilles, as depicted by the

Digby playwright, is a distorted mirror of the kind of Christianity fâmiiiar to a late

medieval English audience; but it is nonetheless paganism and idolatq, a system of empty

signs. Augustine, in De doctrit~a Christirna, rnakes the following distinction between

signifier and signified, as weil as his conclusions on the interpretive importance of caritas:

A person enslaved by a sign is one who worships some thing which is

meaningfid but remains unaware of its meaning. [. ..] The person who does

not understand what a sign means, but at l e m understands that it is a sign,

is not himseif. subject to slavery. [. ..] [Tlhis mie [.. .] wams us not to

pursue a figurative (that is, metaphorical) expression as if it were literal.

[...] [Alnything in the divine discourse that cannot be related either to

good morals or to the true faith should be taken as figurative. Good

morals have to do with Our love of God and Our neighbour. [.. .] [Slcripture

enjoins nothing but love [carifad, and censures nothing but lust

[nrpiditas]. [...] By love I mean the impulse of one's rnind to enjoy God on

his own account and to enjoy oneself and one's neighbour on account of

God, and by lust 1 mean the impulse of one's rnind to enjoy oneselfand

one's neighbour and any corporeal thing not on account of W . ' "

197 "Sub signo enim servit qui operatur aut veneratur aliquam rem significantem, nesciens quid significet. [...] Qui autem non intellegit quid significet signum et tamen sipum esse intelleget nec ipso premÏtur seNitute. [. . . ] Huic autem observationi [. . .] cavemus figuratarn locutionem, id est translatem, quasi propriam sequi. [. ..] quidquid in sermone divino neque ad rnonunhonestatern neque ad fidei veritatem proprie referri potest figuramm esse cognoscoas. Morum honestas ad diligendum deum et proximum. [.. .] Non autem praecipit scriptura nisi caritatem, nec culpat nisi cupiditatem. [. . .] Caritatem voco

101

Throughout the course of the conversion of the Kurg of Matseilles, Mary Magdalene

labours t o replace a set of empty signiners with a set of meaningfbl ones. But in addition

t o this eEo'ort, the character is used to reinforce the audience's faith in that matrïx of signs

within which the audience itself lives, narnely that o f late medieval Christianity, by

reinforcing the importance not just of the signifiers, but o f their connection to the

sovereignry of the true God. Calhg primarily upon Mary Magdalene's established erhos,

the Digby playwright makes his heroine the emblem and spokeswoman for the medieval

Christian system even as she destroys the pagan parody of it.

DSerences between the Christian and pagan worfds are manifold; one key

difference, however, lies in their different ways of using signifiers. In particuiar, the

Christian world is seen to subordinate even speaacdarly visual signifien t o the

transparency of language. while the pagan world reduces even language to the opaque.

For instance, Pentecost, the emblem of Luiguistic understanding but also a potentially

spectacular visual display, is not portrayed Msuaily; rather, it occurs offstage while "De

Kyng of Marcyii x d begynne a sacrSj.ceW (s-d. 1 132). The event is recalied verbally,

however, by Mary Magdalene herself Entenng "wyth hyr dysypull" (s-d. 133 5) , she says,

4 now 1 remembyr my Lord bat put was to ded

Wyth he Jewys, wythowttyn gyftt o r treson!

motum animi ad hendurn deo propter ipsum et se atque proximo propter deum; cupiditatem autem motum animi ad h e n d u m se et proximo et quolibet corpore non propter deum." Augustine, Deducaina Chrislianu iii.x.14-15, 144-149. See also D.W. Robert son, Jr., A Preface io C h c e r : Siudies in Medieval Perspeciives (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1962) 295, for a classic, though now somewhat old-fashioned, perspective on the problem.

Pe therd nygth he ros be myth of hys Godhed;

Vpon be Sonday had hys gloryus resurrexcyon,

And now is lx tyme past of hys gloryus asencyon;

He steyyd to hevyn, and ber he is kyng.

A! Hys grett kendnesse may natt fio my mencyon!

Of d e maner tonggys he 3af vs knowyng,

For to vndyrstond every langwage.

Now have pe dys~p~ l Iys take ber passage

To dyvers contreys her and sondyr,

To prech and teche of hys hye damage-

Full ferr ar my brothryn departyd asondyr (1 336- 1348).

Pentecost is here rendered entirely verbal; rather than a spectacle seen by the audience, it

is able to be portrayed only through words.

By contrast, the system of paganisrn depicted in the play renders words opaque,

able to s i g n e merely as distoned, parodic icons of the tme church rather than as symbols

of anything transcendent. While the gift of tongues is being given to the Apoales, the

King of Marseiües participates in a cerernony that centres upon the antithesis of language:

a Iiturgy of mock-Latin and meaningless sound:

Leccyo mahow)rdys, viri forrissimi sarasenorum:

Glabriosum ad givmmrdum givmardinon~m,

Gormondonm c~lconm, stampatinatum nrrsonrm,

Cowntthtys fiIcatum. congmymhm fersomm,

M u m m mrrlgonrm. mataramrum,

Skorhm siaIpnm* fwmm cardicufomm,

Slmu&i strovmppt~m, corbolconrm,

Snyguer nt~goer wenvolflomm

Stdgardum lamba beffe f forum,

Strwtum star@ stmngolconrnr.

Rygour & g m f r f l l .

Castrarrm mty rybaldorum,

Howndys and hoggys, in heggys and hellys,

Snakys and toddys mon be yower bellys!

Rageil and Rofijm, and other in Be wavys,

Gravntt yow grace to dye on Be galows! (1 186-1201)

The mock iiturgy, with its opening line of (more or less) actual Latin and its repeated use

of Latinate forms such as the genitive plurd s d f k , cannot but serve as a kind of parody.

It is also largely composed of what can only be called barbarisms. Stylistically, it

resembles neither the high, middle, nor low styles, since ail of those styles presuppose

correct usage.

Richard Lanham, however, divides style dong two axes rather than one. In

addition to the hi& middle, and low styles, he also includes the transparent style, in which

language does not call attention to itself, and the opaque style, in which it insists upon

doing so. He diagrams his own scheme as follows:

hi&

transparent I

m i d d l ~ p q w

Lanham argues that clarity and opacity are not absolutes but depend upon each other for

The reai deceiver is the plain stylist who pretends to put di his cards on the

table. [...] For this tnck we return thanks. We are reassured. The world is

made idce our minds. We don't want to reflect, consider that it may be an

illusion.

Without taking Lanham's ideological position, one must nonetheless admit that when

confionted with opacity of language, one sees a worfd that is not like one's own mind, and

that when confronted with transparency of language, one is indeed reassured. In the

Digby M a v Magkiene, this contrast between opacity, of calling attention to language for

its own sake, and clarity, of dectaring language to be a rhetorical vehicle for divine

authority, frames the conflict between paganism and Christianity in the court of Marseilles.

The words of paganism, directed as they are to an id04 may seem efficacious to

those who live within their matrix; yet to the Christian audience, whatever rhetorical

ornamentation they may have is rnerely empty decoration. For exarnple, there is the King's

lg8 Richard A. Lanham, nie Maives of Eiqtcertce: Litermy Rhezoric in the Rerzaissame (New Haven: Yaie UP, 1 976) 26.

lm Lanham, Motives of EIoquer1ce 26.

2m Lanham, Motives of Eioquence 22.

own prayer to his idol:

REX dicitt. Mahownd, b u art of rnytys most,

In my syth a gloryus gost-

Pou comfortyst me both in contre and cost,

Wyth Pi wesdom and Pi wytt,

For truly, lord, in is my trost.

Good lord, lett natt my sowle be lost!

Al1 my cownseU well bou wotst,

Here in Bi presens as I sett (1 2 10-121 7).

Were it not for the first word of this speech, t might easily be mistaken for a pious and

acceptable prayer fiom a vimious character, nonetheless, it is clearly directed to the wrong

lord- As John Veiz puts it, "grace and morality are a matter of being subject to the right

king."'0' When it is directed to the wrong king, even its rhetoricai omamentation, such as

its alliteration, becomes mere decoration, as empty as the Kin@ own finery of costume.

Furthemore, when directed to the wrong king sacramental s i_ders such as the relic of

"Mahowndys own yeelyd!" (1237) fundon in a manner that is the precise opposite of that

of Christian sacraments:

3e may have of pis grett store;

And ye knew be cavse wherfor,

Ytt woll make yow bIynd for ewyrmore,

bis same holy bede! (1 238- 124 1).

'O' Velz, "Sovereignty in the Digby Mary Maghiene"

They are not only ineffective, but also counterproductive.

The audience is thus placed into a position radically outside the world of

MarseiIles. Able to recognize the intended fiinctions of the pagan signifiers, they

nonetheless are able to see their emptiness. This world, they can see, is not like theirs.

They then are able to view with understanding of both forrn and fbnction the result when

Mary ~Magdalene enters the world of the pagan system and begins to challenge that system

by argument and ethos, signified once again by diierences in style as well as in matter.

It is notable that, in this version of the story, Mary Magdalene does not set out for

Marseiiles for the reason usual to her story. in the Legelah aurea and in such subsequent

reteiiings as the South E11gIish LegertdinySm Mary Magdaiene and severai other disciples

were herded by the unbeiievers Uito a ship without pilot or rudder and sent

out to sea so that they might aii be drowned, but by God's will they

eventually landed at M a r ~ e i l l e s . ~

In the Digby MT Mugaidene, however, there is nothing accidental about either Mary's

journey or her vocation as preacher.

EJHESUS]: Raphaeli , myn ange11 in my syte,

To Mary Mavdleyn decende in a whyle,

Byd here passe pe se be my myth,

And sey she xail converte De land of Marcyll.

"' Grantley, "Source of the Digby Mary Magdzien" 457459.

"' "ab infidelibus impositi et pelago sine aliquo gubernatore expositi ut ornes scilicet submergerentur diuino tandem nutu Marsiliarn aduenemnt." Jacobus, Legencia Awea vol. 1, 63 1; Gofderl Legend vol. 1, 376.

[AWGELUS]: Abasse pe novtt, Mary, in Pis place!

Ower Lordys preceptt b u must fùU@li.

To passe Be see in shom space,

Omo be lond of Marcyll.

K p g and quene converte xall3e,

And byn amyttyd as an holy apostylesse.

PSARi M A W D L E V : With bi grace, good Lord in Deite,

Now to pe see 1 wyll m e hy,

Sum sheppyng to asspy (1368-1371, 1376-1 380, 1390-1 392).

This deliberate, not accidental, undertaking to the king, not merely the people at random,

identifies Mary Magdalene's oratory as central to her sainthood. Indeed, even the

character's traditional role as weeper at the foot of the cross is transformed into pure

oratory, when, as one of the three Marys, she enters to recall the crucinxion vehally to an

audience that has not, in this play, actually seen it (993-1022). As a result, when Mary

Magdalene ernbarks upon her preaching career, her character as a whole reaches its most

fully developed; callins hlly upon the power of her ethos the playwright presents a

compebg character who acts as mediator, intercessor, and above di as preacher.

Mary's initial appearance before the King of Marseilles is not, as in the Legenda

azwea, in reaction to any specific act of sacrifice, but more generally "Of my Lordys lawys

to she[w] pe sentens,/Bothe of hys Godhed and of hys powerew (1452-1453). After a

brief altercation with the King, who demands to know of the power of her God, she

repeats the Genesis 1 account of creation (148 1 - 1 SZ), with one major ciifference: her

quotation of the "in p~cipio" of the Gospel according to John rather than that of Genesis:

Syr, I wyU declare al and sum,

What fiom God *st ded procede.

He seyd, "In prirtcipio erat verbum",

And ytth bat he provyd hys grett Godhed! (148 1-1 484).

In stressing the importance of the transcendent and transparent Word, Mary MagdaIene

challenges the pagan system at its root. She also uses a subdued styk rather than a grand

one, echoing Augustine's insistence that an orator "in the restrained style [. . .] persuades

people that what he says is me." In other words, the orator teaches using that style.

The King's reply explicitly reveals the nature of his paganism and of Mary Magdaiene's

task as rhetor:

Herke, woman, thow hast many resonnys grett!

I thyngk, ont0 my goddys aperteynyng bey beth!

But bou make me answer son, 1 xall be fiett,

And cut pe tong owt of hi hed! (1 526- 1529).

The King's challenge is surprisingly detailed in its implications. In noting Mary

Magdalene's "many resonnys grett," he can only be referring to the facts of the creation

"Persuadet autem in sumrnisso genere vera esse quae dicit;" Augustine, De domina Chris fiana iv.xxv.5 5,272-273 -

109

story she has just told. W~th his s e a n d iine, however, the King reinterprets their fbction

as that of rhetoncal commonplaces; rather than evidence specifïcally leading to the

worship of her Gd, he implies that they can aiso be applied equaüy weU to another goai

or conclusion. In his view, condiîioned by his system, words are not transparent to a clear

meaning, but rather are opaque instruments capable of direction to numerous targets.

Furthemore, his threat to cut out Mary Magdalene's tongue suggests not only a

personal discodort with her words, but also his pagaa religion's inability with words in

general. Appropriately, in answenng Mary Magdalene's challenge, the King responds not

with his own words but with visual icons:

Hens to be tempyU bat we ware,

And ber xaü thow se a solom syth.

Corn on all, both lesse and more,

Thys day to se my goddys myth! (1 534-1537).

Upon their arrivd at the temple, however, the King's demand of words fiom his id01 l a d s

to the d o d a l l , both figurative and literal, of his id01 and its priesthood:

w w : Lord, 1 besech Pi grett myth,

Speke to Pis Chrisetyn bat here sestt Clou!

Speke, god lord, speke! Se how 1 do bow!

Herke, pou pryn! Qwat menytt ail this?

What? Speke, good lord, speke! What eylytt Be now?

Speke, as thow artt bote of aii blysse! (1 538-1 545).

Upon the failure of the id01 to utter a word, Mary Magdalene utters the first genuine Latin

in the temple, with literally spectacular results.

The replacement of mock-Latin with real Latin, of mere f o m with actual language,

of warped icon with transparent sign, leads to the downfatl of the entire pagan system.

MARY: Domims. iihminaçio ma, quem tirnebo?

Domimrs, protecctor vite rnee. a quo trepe&bo?

Here ralk marnent tremyll and quake

Here d comme a ciowdfiom heven, and sen tempyl on &ers aridk

pyst d p e cler&XJ xall synke (1 552-s.d. 1553, s.d. 156 1).

In sum, what has happened here is a pair of stylistic r e a l i p e n t s . The £kst is the

revelation that the "marnent" is merely an empty sign, and dong with it the liturgy, the

prayer of the King, the relics, the temple, the whole pagan system. The second is the

removal of the parodic s i m e r s o f the Christian system, so that the Christian system itself

c m take root in the world of the court of M a r s e i l l e ~ . ~ ~

Replacing the visible signs of the temple, however, are not only the verbal prowess

of the preacher, but a set o f visual signs centred on the ethos of the preacher. In

particular, the white m a d e that Mary Magdalene dons is crucial to her suc ces^.^^

[Znd ANGEL]. Ln a mentyll of white xall be ower araye.

"' As the Trefise of Mirad is Pleyinge declares, conversion is essentially the despising of empty signifiers (1 02- 103).

'06 Theresa Coletti, "The Design of the Digby Play of M q Magubfe~te," Srudies in Philology 76.4 (1979): 330-

The dorys xall opyn a3ens vs be ryth.

MARY. O gracyus God, now I vndyrstond!

Thys clothyng of whyte is tokenyng of mekenesse (1604-1607).

This "tokenyng" seems intended only for the King's dreaming state, not for his waking,

since immediately after Mary Magdalene speaks to the sleeping King she "woyrfyr, andk

ar~gyIZ and M q chongg hyr clotheyng" (s.d. 16 1 7), apparently back to her ordinary

costume. The eEect of her symbolic clothuig, however, opens up the possibility of the

King's conversion:

NXJ. 4 bis day is corn! 1 am mery and glad!

The Sun is vp and shynyth bryth!

A mervelows shewyng in my slep 1 had,

That sore me trobelyd Pis same nyth-

A fayer woman 1 saw in my syth,

Al1 in whyte was she cladd;

Led she was wyth an an@ bryth,

To me she spake wyth wordys sad (1618-1625).

Yet as the sequence of the King's memones seems to indicate, he is to move fiom the

opaque to the transparent in his understanding. The divine court to which the King is to

devote himselfuses al1 the rhetorical means at its disposal (emphasising the word more

than the visual, but not lacking the visual), but the efficacy of those means is detennined

by the correctness of the court's hierarchy; in the realm of human action, that correctness

is manifest as the allegiance of the soul-

112

Appropriately, when the king speaks next with M q Magdalene, he may address

her as "Thow fayer woman" (1 650), but more importantly he asks her to "reherse here

presentt,/The joyys of yower Lord in heven" (1656-1657). The moment of the King's

actual conversion, however, rnay be said to follow the Queen's discovery of her

miraculous pregnancy, wit h the foliowing exchange:

REX. Now, fayer womman, sey me pe sentens,

1 beseche be, whatt is bi name?

MARY. Syr, a3ens bat 1 make no resystens!

Mary Mavdleyn, wythowtyn blame (1672-1 675).

The h g ' s address of Mary Magdalene again refers to her appearance, but his interest is in

the meaning or "sentens" of her name. Her reply, "Mary Mavdleyn, wythowtyn blame,"

does not reflect a mere metrical tag as it rnay seem to do; rather, it refers directly to one

given etymoiogy of her name as given in the Legetlcta aurea: "Mary is called Magdalene,

which is understood to mean 'remaining g~ilty' ."~' Furthemore, her following demand

that the King "xall t h d ' y t t Peg~, rny mastyr, wythowt de1ay" (1680), thgs sending him

across the sea on the journey that l a d s apparently to his d e ' s death, seems to refer to yet

anot her etymological meaning of her name: "The narne Mary, or Maria, is interpreted as

amarum mare, bitter ~ a . " ' ~ ~ The empty visual signs of the pagan world have vanished,

replaced by words that are transparent to significance; the sovereignty of the King is

'O7 "Magdalena dicimr quasi manens rea." Jacobus, Legenda uurea vol. 1,628; Golden Legend vol. 1 , 375.

'O8 "Maria interpretatur amarum mare. " lacobus, Legelda autea vol. 1, 628; G o i ' h ~ Legertd vol. 1, 374.

placed under the sovereîgnty of the Chwch and its saints.

The arriva1 of the King at Jerusalem &es complete the replacement of pagan res

with Christian signa, with the focus sti l i upon the signifieci, or sentem. The m g ' s

conversation with Peter exemplifies this change.

REX. 4 holy fathyr, how my hart wyll be sor

Of cummav[n]ddementt, and 3e declare nat sentens!

PET3R Syr, dayly 3e xall lobor more and more,

Tyii bat 3e have very experyens.

Wyth me xaü 3e wall to have more eloquens,

And goo vesyte Be stacyons, by and by;

To Nazareth and Bedlem, goo wyth delygens,

And be yower own inspeccyon, yower feyth to edyfy.

REX. Now, holy father, derevorthy and dere,

Myn intent now know 3e.

It is gon hl1 to 3ere

Pat 1 cam to yow owere be se (1843-1854).

Several aspects of this conversation demonstrate the key points that the playwïght is

making about Christian symboiism, rhetoric, and experience.

The f h t of these points is Peter's insistence that Christian eloquence is the product

of "very experyens" brought on by the triggers of collective and affective memory: his

explanation that the King must "wail," or go on pilgrimage, to gain eloquence, assens the

nonalgic power of "Be stacyons" and their ability to bring knowledge through the pure

"inspeccyon" of the pilgrim. The second point stems fkom the fact that the King a t this

time is already converted. Although Mary Magdalene's power to convert has been

demonstrated, the eloquence the King is to cultivate is not itself for that purpose. George

A. Kennedy observes that, at the most basic level,

Augustine [.. .] regarded conversion as an act of the Spirit in which

eloquence has no tme role. [...] The firnction of Christian eloquence in

Augustine's system is to convert belief into works, to impel the faitffil to

the Christian Life.'og

Appropriately, the King has already been baptised (1840) when he undertakes his joumey,

his "feyth to edyfl" (1850). The third point that the playwright makes is that faith is based

closely upon personal experience, once one has subrnined to the proper authority. This

point is made the more graphic by the f a a that Peter, the fira Pope, sends the King to

have "very experyens" rather than preaching to him. It is not the case either, however,

that the King's experience is to occur independently; Peter intends, so he says, to

accompany the King on his pilgrimage. Thus the playwrïght uses this episode to suggest

to the audience that the Christian sou1 is impelled to the Christian life by a guided joumey

under the proper authority of the Church, whose function it is to help the faitffil achieve a

personal experience of the truth.

The final emphasis upon the importance of the individual experience is that the

King's own experience is not portrayed. Within a few lines, the King declares two years to

'" Kennedy, Cfaxsicaf Rhe foric und Ifs Christian cad Secu lm Tradiron 1 5 7.

115

be over and his joumey to be complete. This strange piece of staging (or of non-staging)

may reflect some of the transiency of affective mystical e~~erience,"~ but more likely it

reflects the ineffably personal quality of that experience. The playwright may be d h g to

lead the audience through its own "wall to have more eloquens," but he is not willuig to

portray the imer workings of anothef s experience.

This point is rendered sharper when one examines the audience's own trip through

the "stacyons," led by Mary Magdalene. During the King of Marseille's first appearance

(925-962), the Crucinxion happens out of sight of the audience, to be recounted verbdy

by 'pe t h e Maris moyydas chast women. wyih sygnis of je passyotn p t y n t y d p n F

brest" (s-d. 992):

MWDLEYNJ Alas, alas, for bat ryal1 bem!

4 bis percytt my hartt worst of dl!

For here he turnyd asen to be woman of Jemsaiem,

And for wherynesse lett be crosse falie!

MARY JACOBE. ïhys sorow is beytterare ban ony galle,

For here Be Jevys spomyd hym to make hym goo.

(993-998, rny emphasis)

The events marked by the two occurrences of "here" seem to correspond, in modem

Catholic devotion, to the eighth and ninth stations of the cross, in which Jesus speaks to

"%ee William James, The Vizrieiies of Religious Experience: A Stu& in Human Narzrre, 1902 (New York: Modem Library, n-d.) 372.

the women of Jenisalem, and falls for the third time, re~peaively.~" The leading of

communal response seems perhaps to be within the playwright's mandate, as in the stage

direction following the raising of Lazams "Here ail /w pepuif and@ Jewys, Ahr i aod

Marth, wyth or, voys sey @s wordys: 'We beleve in yow, hyowt , Jhests, Jhesus,

Jhems!"' (s-d. 920), although it seems on the whole unlikely that this bnef shout was

rneant for the audience to juin in. The characters' response to the Passion, however, such

as one finds in the N-Town passion sequence, is not portrayed; rather, it is cued

rhetoricaliy in the audience by the three Maries. The audience's response is to be its own.

This is not the only moment when such rhetorical and affective emphasis occurs.

Previously, the crucifixion has also taken place "ofEstage," while the King of MarseilIes

introduces himself and the Devil takes bis leave (925-992); following this incident, lMary

Magdalene, Mary Jacobe, and M q Salome also guide the audience through a purely

rhetorical and retrospective experience of the event. In this passage, the three Maries

establish the presence and location of holy places in a manner not unlike the mernorial

techniques of antiquity and of medieval rhetorical education. The difference is that,

instead of locating mernories within a purely irnaginaq tandscape, they Iocate them within

the actuai Iandscape of the playing space."' While there is nothing for the audience to see

" ' " S talions of the Cross, " The Oxford Dictiortary of the Chrisrian Church, 3" ed., ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (Odord: Oxford UP, 1997) 1538- 1539.

'" See, for instance, ad Herennium 3.16.26-3 -21 -34, p. 208-2 19; also Carruthers, Book of Memor), 7 1-79. Although Camthers notes that "the architectural mnernonic," as she cails it, was not the only such method (80), it seems t o have been cornmon in the rhetoric of pilgrimage and of devotion: witness the experiences of Margery Kempe at Jerusalem (Book of Mmgery Kempe 65-75), in which devotion to particular places led to nostalgie experience of the most powerfirl kind. Margery Kempe was not alone in her manner of

except for the Maries thenwlves, their words create rinial space without the need for

architecturai signs. The persons of the Maries, the signs of the passion they Wear, and

their words are suficient.

When the King of Marseiiles, then, visits Peter with the intent to "vesyte be

stacyons, by and byw (1 848), it is no wonder that his experience rernains unportrayed; nor

is it surpnsing that the Queen's experience is not ody unportrayed but also uncanny:

WGINA]. O demw Mavdlyn, my bodys sustynavns!

Pou hast wr[a]ppyd vs in wele fiom all waryawns,

And led me wyth my lord i[n]to be Holy Lond!

1 am bapysyd, as ye are, be Maryvs gyddavns,

Of Sent Petyrys holy hand.

1 sye Be blyssyd crosse bat Cryst shed on hys precyvs blod;

Hys blyssyd sepulcur dso se 1.

Whetrlfor, good hosbond, be mery in mode,

For 1 have gon pe stacyounys, by and by! (1902-1 9 10)

Though the Queen may have gone the stations indeed, the audience is not privileged to see

her do so; rather, their perspective is, once again, purely rhetorical and imaginative.

devotion; such devotion to holy places, and indeed to simulacra of holy places, had bem cornmon in the Mediterranean since antiquity, and with the Franciscan takeover of the shrines of the Holy Land in 1342, such devotion spread throughout Europe, eventually taking form in the devotion of the Stations of the Cross. See "Stations of the Cross," The H q e r Collins EncycIopeûiu of CathoZicism, gen. ed. Richard P. McBrien (San Francisco: Harper, 1995) 1222.

In ail of these events, the figure of Mary Magdalene has îunctioned as mdator ,

dowing both the other chtracters and the audience to interpret their experiences in mch a

way as to encounge the fàith she symbolizes. In the example of the King and Queen of

Marseilles, as we have seen, her mediation is direct. It is also acknowledged, as when the

Queen credits Mary Magdalene for saving her life and leading her, as it were, through the

a a t i ~ n s . " ~ The finai episodes of Mary Magdalene's üfe, those that take place in the

desert, are portrayed in a rather different way, one that throws the Queen's closed-off

experience open to the audience, and that brings the possibility of such experience into the

present -

The Legertci4 uurea says iïttie to introduce this period of the saint's Me, saying

merely that

[a]t this t h e blessed Mary ~Vagdalene, wishing to devote herself to

heavenly contemplation, retired to an empty wilderness, and lived unknown

for thirty yean in a place made ready by the hands of an gel^.^'^

In the Digby play, M q Magdalene herseif says little more, but what she does say is

revealing.

"' In the Legendo uurea, this fact is even more expiicit; the Queen tells her husband directly, "sicut beatus P e t w te nierosoham d u i t [.. .] sic et ego una cum beata Maria Magdalena duce et c o i t e uobiscum fui et singula loca conspexi et conspecta memorie commendauilas blessed Peter conducted you to Jenisalem [...] 1, with blessed Mary Magdalene as my guide and cornpanion, was with you and comrnitted al1 you saw to memory. " lacobus, L e g e d aurea vol. 1, 636; Golden Legend vol. 1, 3 79.

*" "Interea beata Maria Magdalena supeme contemplationis auida asperrünam heremurn petiit et in loco angelicis manibus preparato per xxx annos incognita mansit." Jacobus, Legen& aurea vol. 1, 636; Golden Legertd vol. 1, 380.

In bis deserte abydyn wyll wee,

My sowle fiom synne for to save;

1 wyll evyr abyte me wyth humelyte,

And put me in pacyens, my Lord for to love (1 989- 1992).

It is striking that Mary uses the plural pronoun, seemingly including the audience in her

hermitage. If the audience was not pennitted to view or participate in the expenence of

the King and Queen, they are expiicitly allowed to be part of that of the saint.

And ferdamore, 1 wyll leven in charyte,

At pe reverens of Ower Blyssyd Lady,

In goodnesse to be lyberall, my sowle to edy@e (1 997-1 999).

Here, again, the saint drops a striking detail, namely, the reference to the Vugin Mary.

Throughout the end of the Marseilles episode, the play has shown a curious tendency to

conflate its centrai character with the Virgin; it goes so far as to show the King addressing

Mary Magdafene thus:

Heyll be Bou, Mary! Ower Lord is wyth the!

The helth of ower sowilys, and repast contemplatyffi

Heyll, tabymakyll of pe biyssyd Trenite!

Heyll, covnfortabyll sokore for man and wyfB (1 93 9- 1942).

In this final episode, the saint's confiation with the Virgin becomes rather more cornplex.

Though she explicitly states that she will live at the V i r M s "reverens," thus betokening a

separation of identity, she nonetheless will rernind audiences suikingly of her narnesake,

particularly in her assumption into Heaven at the end.

This similarity rnay be rendered the more srriking depending on how she is

costumed during this scene. Iconographidy, Mary Magdalene in the desert is offen

depiaed nude, clothed oniy in her long, aii-covering hair. Yet CiifFord Davidson points to

one early Meenth-centq example which depicts her instead wearing "a blue mantle over

her kinle;""5 if a costume like this was used, then her sïmiiarity to the Vugin rnay have

been both evident and nrikingeX6 There is, however, no sure way of knowing how Mary

Magdalene is supposed to be clothed.

At any rate, her function in the final scenes of the play is dual: both saint and

layperson, she acts in relation to God and to the "ho& presf in /x same wyl?yrnesseW (s-d.

2038). 80th of these relationships, in turn, act to strengthen the audience in community

and in faith by establishing a decorum refiective not of earthly but of heaveniy status: a

deconrm of, in fact, the Church and its faithfiil. Utimately, her task in these final scenes is

to leave the earth behind-not for her own sake, but as a way of tuming her tùnctions

over to the Church and its people who remah on earth: particulariy the members of the

Church who are present as the audience-

M e n Mary Magdalene partakes of the sacrament "in mibibus" (s-d. 2030)- her

words are echoed by the Priest who appears below her; fiirthermore, both of their

speeches echo the words of Jesus spoken a few lines before. The resulting knitting

"' Davidson, "Middle En@sh Saint Play" 93. The reference is to Bodleian MS. Laud Lat. 15, fol. 20'.

"6Coletti suggests that Mary Magdalene would appear "in a hemut's garb" in the final scenes of this play, but there reaiiy is no indication of what exactly she is to Wear, despite the "rather conclusive evidence for the Digby playwright's attention to clothing in this part of the play. " "Design" 33 1.

121

together of thought and word suggests a single fiame of reference common to all three.

[JIESUS]. Wyth joy of r~gyI&s, Pis lett hur receyve.

Byd hur injoye wyth aii hur aawns,

For îjmddysfiawd xaif h r non deseye.

w]. O Lord of lor&ys, of hye domenacyon!

In hewen and erth worsheppyd bepi name.

How bou devydyst me fiom hovngure and wexacyon!

O gloryus Lord, in pe is ~iofiavd@s nor no defarne!

But 1 xuld serve my Lord, I were to blarne,

Wych firiifyiiyt me wyth so gret feficire.

Wyth melady of angyliys shewit me gle and garne,

And have fed me wyth fode of most detycyte!

Her xull speke an ho& prest b i b same wyldyrnesse, pus s e p g b prest

PREST]. O lordof forrtdys! What may bis be?

S o gret mesteryys shewyd fkom heven,

Wyth grett myrrh und me!@

Wyth angyiljs brygth as pe iewyn!

Lord Jhesu, for pi namys sewynne,

As gram me grace bat person to se! (2008-20 10,203 1-2044)

In the above citation, the words and phrases that repeat in some variation between the

three speakers are italicized; the mphora of "W*" the diacop of "lord/lordyys", and

the epimome of several phrases knit the stanzas together through repetition. Between

them one can see the important points of the society of fàith that they foxm: Jesus as

Lord of lords, the importance of his name or narnes, the devü's h u d and Jesus' lack of it,

and the joy and melody of angels.

The way that the three characters interact on stage brings this society of € ' th into

focus. The ethos of Mary Magdalene continues to be emphasised. The other characters

refer to her as "wel-belovyd fiynd" (2004), as one who cano t be deceived by "@ndyys

frawd" (20 1 O), as "Crystys delecceonw (2045), "swetter pan sugur or cypressew (2046),~"

"Grea [...] wyth God for Pi perfythnesse" (2048), and many another epithet of praise.

Funhermore, her own actions continue to show her Wtue not only in piety but in

counesy, as when she tells the Priest,

p]ou art wolcum ont0 my syth,

Yf pou be of good conversacyon.

As 1 thynk in my delyth,

Thow shoiddyst be a man of devocyon (2061-2064).

But while the importance of erhos remains as strong in this section as in the conversion

scenes in MarseiUes, it is not the conversion of characters but the reinforcement of the

community of faith that is its explicit as weU as implicit fiinction.

This comunity of faith, constituted on stage by the three characters just

1 "' For the importance of food imagery in the play, see Coleni, "Design" 3 16-325.

mentioned, undergoes a rapid expansion as the play draws to its end. During the thirty

years of Mary Magdalene's herrnitage, she has received the Host fiom God in Heaven; just

before her deaîh, however, she is to receive it f?om the earthly Priest. Their words

together show the degree to which the saint is disengaging fiom earthly Me:

PRESBITYR]. Bou blyssyd woman, invre in mekenesse,

1 have browth be bred of Iyfto Pi syth,

To make suere fiom ail dystresse,

Pi sowle to bryng to euyrlastyng lyth.

MARI. O bou mythty Lord of hye mageste,

Pis celestyall bred for to detennyn,

Thys tyme to reseyve it in me,

My sowle berwyth to illumyn (2 10 1-2 108).

Furthemore, the Priest's h a i words in the play show the degree to whîch the community

of faith suddenly widens to include the audience as a whole:

PRYST. O good God, grett is bi gace!

O Jhesu, Jhesu! Blessyd be bi narne!

A, Mary, Mary! Mych is bi solas,

In heven blysse wyth gie and game!

Pi body wyl 1 cure 6om d e manyr blame,

And 1 wyll passe to be bosshop of Be sete

Thys body of Mary to berye be name,

Wyth d e rwerens and solemnyte.

Sufferens of pis processe, thus enddyt be sentens

That we have playyd in yower syth.

Allemythty God, most of magnyfjcens,

Mote bryng yow to hys blysse so bryth,

In presens of bat Kyng!

Now, fiendys, thus endyt thys matere-

To blysse bryng po bat byn here!

Now, clerQs, wyth woycys der,

'Te Deum lavrtamus' lett vs syng! (2 123-2139).

Ln caliing for a canticle to end the play, the Digby playwright attempts to move the

audience to act as one in faith; by making the character of the Priest d o so, to the

accompaniment of the procession of the saint's body, he emphasises the sacramental

function of his central figure and of her story. Finaiiy, by bringing the audience into the

play as part of the finai procession, the Digby playwr-ight comects them bodily with the

entirety of the Church of history; the audience's role is to be the same sacred comuni ty

that the play has just evoked.

Ultimately, the Digby playwright acknowledges that the power of God alone can

bring his audience to eternal bliss; yet in linking that acknowledgement with a weU-known

hymn, a procession, and an awareness of the audience's presence through direct address,

he incorporates the audience WIy into the "matere" of which he writes: "Now, fiendys,

125

thus endyt thys mater+/To blysse bryng Bo bat byn here!" (2 136-2 137). Though he has

emphasised the importance of the character of Mary Magddene throughout the action of

the play, in the end he turns her fiiaction over to that of the Church as a whole: it is what

must sustain and nurture faith and the fàithfùl. As ClEord Davidson has noted, however,

Mary Magdalene

was closely associated with the idea of the Church itseK As such, she was

seen as an exemplar of the Christian life in its ideal form, providing a

pattern for al1 to foUow in movement fiom a failen state to penitence and

then to caref'ully introspective contemplation. [. . .] mence her character

may Ïn the end be said to encompass the members of the audience as the

action of the play, performed on the East Anglian place-and-dold stage,

may in turn have seemed physically to encompass them.218

It has been argued that the only Link among the multifârious parts of this play is the

character of Mary Magdalene herselfX9 Yet the importance that the playwright places

upon her ethos combined with her sacramental fùnction as saint makes this no mere thread

of cornmonality. Rather, her omnipresence is a constant reminder to the audience of the

Christian Me, of the Church, and of their own role within the Church. An audience judges

ethos by its own view of the good life;nO conversely, it aiso is given the chance t o see and

reinforce its view of the good Me by observing a compelling exemplar of it. In the

"' Davidson, "Middle English Saint Play" 7 1, 97.

Leon Eugene Lewis, "The Play of Mary Mag&iene," DAI 23 (1 963) 4685-86.

'20 Hauser, I~ttroduction tu Rhetoricaf nteory 100.

126

creation of his Mary Magdalene, not a repentant whore of another land, but a noble,

eloquent, and ethicai preacher, exemplar, and sacramental power in the conte- of late

medieval Christianity, the Digby playwright gives his audience not only a figure to admire,

imitate, and foilow, but aiso a bridge between themselves and the Church of the apodes.

Chapter 4

Joseph, Pathos, and the Audience's Participation in the Incamation

The elhos of Mary Magdaiene and the power of her rhetoric, as we have seen, are

effective tools in realigning both language and the sympathies of the audience to a position

of faith and cornrnunity. Iust as the East Anglian audience of the Digby plays is asked to

take the final step in imagining and e f f h g the process of salvation in themselves, so also

the audience of the York Cycle must enter into the world of the play and of salvation

history; they are asked to do so through sympathy, and the York Cycle helps them to do

so in a number of ways. One of the most vivid and mernorable ways is through the

character of Joseph, the foster-father of Christ. in the arc of his story, Joseph moves fiom

a position of doubt to a position of faith, but he also moves increasingly closer to the

motives and interests of the audience. From the beginning depicted as an ordinary man,

Joseph by the end of his story appears also as one who is tùliy able, both despite his

human frailty and because of it, to be caiied a saint and an example of holiness for the

audience.

The York Cycle's portrayai of Joseph is among the most cornplex, and certainly

among the most varied, in al1 of Middle En@h drarna. Much of t his character's

singularity stems frorn his unusual textual history; like the Virgin, he plays a key role in the

Gospels though they provide few details about him; like her, he was the subject of much

apocryphai wrïting; unlike her, his cult was just coming into its own when the Middle

English drarna was developing. These three strands of writings on Joseph combine to

fom a somewhat p r o b l d c character for a playWright who intends to convey an

onhodox point of view to an audience, and to move them to a position of faith.

The elements that these strands contributed to the plays are reasonably simple to

identi@. Joseph plays a role in only two of the four canonical gospels: Matthew and

Luke. In Matthew, angels visit Joseph to assure him of Mary's virwty (Matthew 1 :20-

2 1 ), to warn him to flee with Christ to Egypt (Matthew 2: 1 3), and to advise him tu retum

with Christ to Nazareth (Matthew 2:20). Joseph says not a word in response, but foliows

instructions and vanishes, his role as plot device fulfüled. In Luke, his role is even

humbler. The angels in this account visit Mary and a group of shepherds, but they do not

visit Joseph (Luke 1 :26-38; 2:s-14). In addition, Christ's first reported words in Luke are,

"How is it that you sought me? did you not know, that I must be about my Father's

business?" (Luke 2:49). " 9 And with that statement of disownuig, Joseph drops out of the

gospels.

The apocryphai sources are far more detailed, and were highly influentid upon

medieval art and drama? Marina Wamer notes that the "religious dramas followed the

"9 "Quid est quod me quaerebatis? nesciebatis quia in his quae Patns mei sunt, oponet me esse?"

"O Francis L. Filas in Joseph, the Man Closest to Jesus: 7he Compfefe Life, Ineology, arrd Devotional History of St. Joseph (Boston: St. Paul, 1962) 25-36, lists six apocryphal sources dealing with Joseph; of these, only the three discussed below could have had any probable, direct effect upon the cycle plays because of content and chronology. The apocryphal sources cited are printed in English in several sources, including The Apocvphal Gospefs and Other Documents Refutirrg ro the History of Christ, ed. B. Harris Cowper (London, 2867), me Lost Books of the Bibfe und the Forgotten Books of Ederr (Cleveland: Forum, 1 963), and m e Other Bible: Jewish Pseudographia, Christian Apocrypha, Gnostic Scriptures, Kabbafah, Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Willis Barnstone (San Francisco: Harper, 1984), and are annotateci extensively in E. Hemecke, New Testament

Book of Jmes' [or Protevrmgelium] ac~oun t , "~ ' yet that was far fiom the only

apocryphal gospel that shows influence upon the drama. h h e r source, and a slightiy

more acceptable one fiom an ecclesiastid point of view, was the G o p l of Pseudo-

Matrhew, which u;as in fact compiled in order to present the crude and widely condemned

(but extremely popular) material of the Protevangelim in a more acceptable form?

Finally, there is the short Gospel of the Narivity of Mary, which in its relative restraint may

have appealed to the more doctrinally conscious of the playwrights.

The Protevangeiium introduces the elderly Joseph of medieval art, and the cranky,

cornical Joseph of the cycle plays. It teiis at length of his troubles about Mary, and

provides detail in its account: Joseph is in another town for the first months, so that the

sight of Mary's pregnant body catches hirn by swprise. He "smote his face, and threw

himself upon the ground on sackcloth, and wept bitterly, saying, [.. .] '1s not the history of

Adam repeated in me?"= Pseudo-Matthew adds other details: the maids who defend

Mary's innocence and teii Joseph of the angel, his hilarious reply that "some one hath

feigned himself an angel of the Lord and deceived her,""4 and, eventually, his humble

Apocgpha, ed. W . Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson, 2 vols. (London: Lutterwonh P, 1963).

"' Wamer, Aftme of Aif Her Sex 156.

" H e ~ e c k e , Nov Testament Apucgpha 406.

Cowper, Apocrypkl Goqxfs 14-5.

224 Cowper, Apoçwhai G o p f s 46.

130

apology to Mary: "1 have sinneù, in that 1 had some suspicion of thee."" Finaily, whiie

both of these sources add de td to the canonical accounts, the NatiWty of M q subtracts a

key detail fiom the other apocrypha, as it alone "refers to Joseph's great age but says

nothing of his supposed previous M a g e and other ~ h i l d r e n . " ~ Thus the image of

Joseph--the eldedy, cranky newlywed, caught in a completely unexpected situation, with a

great capacity for forgiveness when nudged-is between the three accounts mapped out

for the medieval playwrights.

The question of Joseph's cult, and its infiuence upon the drama, is rather more

complex. While it fkst began to develop in the tweW century, it did not become

widespread until the fifieenth; his feast day of March 19th entered the calendar in 248 1,

dthough it was not made a holy day of obligation until 162 1 .+n Nonetheless many of his

apologists and admirers were staunch indeed; in his second homiiy on the Annunciation,

Bernard of Clairvaux declared,

From the fact that God allowed him to be calied and thought of as father of

the divine Child, you may judge how great a man Joseph was. [...In

Joseph], as though he were another David, the Lord found a man &er His

own har t .=%

Cowper, A p o c r p h a i Gospels 46.

C6 Filas, Joseph 35.

Kolve, P h y Colleci Corpus Chrisi 249.

"F)X hac [...] meruit honorari a Deo, ut pater Dei et dictus, et creditus sit [.. .] non dubitas interpretari, qui et qualis homo nient iste Ioseph [. . . ] tarnquam altemm David Dominus invenit secundum cor tuum." Bernard of Clairvaux, Oeuvres Complètes, ed.

Ln 14 16, at the Council of Constance, Jean Gerson preached,

Weil may we exclaim at your wholly wonderfiil greatness, Joseph! What

an unexampied distinction!-the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, the

Mistress of the world, vouchsafed to cal1 you her master. I do not know

whic h excites the more wonder-Mary's humility or Joseph's exaltedness.

Perhaps most revealing of ail is the statement by Ubertino of Casale, later quoted by

Bernardine of Siena, that Joseph

is the key of the Old Testament, in whorn the patriarchal and prophetid

dignity attained to its promised bit. He alone, fbrthermore, possessed

corporaiiy what the Divine Majesty had promised to the fathers.

Most such exaltation of Joseph during the late rnedieval period occurred on the Continent,

and one cannot argue that these writings had a direct influence upon Joseph's portrayal in

the Middle English drarna. Nonetheless, there is evidence of a longstanding tradition of

Marie-Irnelda Huiile and Joël Regnard (Paris: Éditions du cerS 1993) 164- 166. HeM Rondet, Suint Joseph, ed. and trans. Donald Attwater (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1956) 6 1-62.

2zs "Libet hic exclamare: O miranda prorsus, Joseph, sublimitas tua. O dignitas incomparabilis ut mater Dei, regina coeli, domina mundi, appelare te dominum non indignum putaverit. Nescio sane [. . .] quid hic amplius habeat mirabilis vel humilitas in Maria vel in Joseph subiimitas." Jean Gerson, Oevres Completes, ed. Mgr Glorieux, vol. 5 (Paris: Desdée, 1963) 358. Rondet, &int Joseph 68.

"est clausula Veteris Testamenti, in qua patriarchalis et prophetalis dignitas prornissum consequitur fiuctum. Porro est hic solus, qui corporaliter possedit quod eis divina dignatio reprornisit." Bernardine of Siena, "Sermo II, De sancto Ioseph sponso beatae Virginis," Operu Ornt1ia, ed. Augustini Sepinski, vol. 7 (Florence: Collegi S. Bonaventurae, 1959) 3 5 8. Saint B e m d i ~ t e ' s Sennon on &int Joseph, t r am Eric May (Paterson, NJ: Saint AnthonYs Guild, 1947) 36.

private ifnot public devotion to the saint in England, extending back to at least the twelfth

c e n t ~ r y . ~ ' In addition, the ideas of such continentai writers, especidy Bernard, 6nd

analogues aiso in the Meditoriones vitae ChristÏ,=* which in its Engiish translation,

Nicholas Love's M i m of the BlessedLge of Jesus Christ, was among the most important

English books of the period. Love refers to Joseph in a rather precise way, calling him

w ~ r x h i p ~ l w ~ 3 and also "nyhe & acceptable to g ~ c i , " ~ but noting also that he was not so

exalted as the wrgin herseEn' This is to say no more in an orthodox manner than that

Joseph is a recognized saint, but the book's popularity and its inclusion of Joseph in the

scenes for meditation may be seen as anaiogous to the portrayai of Joseph in the cycles,

where, perhaps for the &st the, the life of Joseph began to be a matter for public

contemplation.

Arnid aii of these strands, the playwrights of the York Cycle undertook the task of

creating a character. That these strands seem confLsed shodd not be surprising. Indeed,

one of the primary problems of reading character in processional plays is the question of

continuity, not only because of source materiais but aiso because of the structure of the

z' Gerald T. Mahon, "The Origin and Development of Devotion t o Saint Joseph in England, " Le Patronage de Saint Joseph: Actes du Congrès d'études (Montreal: Fides, 1956) 175- 192.

"' Éphrem Longpré, "Saint Joseph et l'école franciscaine du XIIle siècle," Le patronage de Saint Joseph 23 7-246; Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green, Medirarions on the Life of Christ xxii, moi-xxvii.

"3 Love, hfirror 47

"' Love, M i n 52.

"35 Love, Mirror 52.

form itself In the York Cycle, for instance7 a new actor appears playing the same role

every twenty minutes or so; in addition, two consecutive pageants might dEer widely in

verse form, in probable authorship, and in probable date of composition. The overall

effect is that each character is rather lïke a temporal collage with human actors as its

materials: what David Antin d e h e s as "the drarnatic juxtaposition of disparate materials

without commitrnent to explicit syntacticai relations between elements.lfw In collage,

there is no hierarchy between individual piecesZ3' No actor playing Joseph is "more"

Joseph than another in this view; rather, they are al1 individual portrayais of the same

character, which together add up ta a single meta-ponrayal.

How, then, is the fact of that meta-ponrayal to be interpreted? It has been

suggested that the multiple face of Christ in the York Cycle and elsewhere serves a

spiritual purpose, to remind the audience that he is "no mere historicd person but is in and

of al1 h~rnanity."~' in the case of Chna that may indeed be the Nnaion. Yet it is not

only Christ who appears in multiple aspects in the York Cycle but also Satan, Adam, Eve,

36 David Antin, "Modernism and Postmodemism: Approaching the Present in Amencan Poetry," B o u ~ d w y 2, 1 (Fall 1972) 106.

=' A slightly more familiar (to medievaiists) explanation rnight be that of what Hauser calls "gothic art," in which "[tlhe basic fonn [...] is juxtaposition. [...] The beholder is, as it were, led through the stages and stations of a joumey, and the picture of reality which it reveds is like a panoramic sumey. [...] In painting it is the 'continuousl method which is favoured; the drarna strives to make the episodes as complete as possible and prefers, instead of the concentration of the action in a few decisive situations, fiequent changes of scene." Arnold Hauser, The Social H i ~ l o ' y of An, trans. Stanley Goodman. Vol. 1 (New York: Knopf, 1952) 272-273.

>* Garrett P. J. Epp, "Visible Words: The York Plays, Brecht, and Gestic Writing," Comparative Drama 24 ( 1990- 199 1) 30 1.

134

Noah, Joseph, Mary, Herod, Pilate, Armas, Caiaphas, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Thomas,

Judas, the other apostles, Malchus, John the Baptist, Moses-characters too rnany and too

various for such a purpose to apply to ail of them. The same can be said of the other

cycles. It is not obvious, then, how to read a character such as Joseph, who cannot

possibly carry the same sigrilficame as Christ but who is, Iike Christ, portrayeci with

multiple faces.

There seem to be two basic possibilities. The first is to resist the temptation to

regard "Joseph" as existing in the York Cycle at aü; in such a view there are only multiple

Josephs, which are not to be seen as related in any consistent way. Such a view is based,

ultimately, upon the idea that meanhg and consistency are something created by an

author, and in the absence of authorid uniformity nothing more could be said. But we are

taking a rhetorical point of view-that is, that the audience is aiso capable of creating

meaning and indeed, will do so inevitably and e~pectedly.~~ Indeed, the York Cycle's

Joseph fkom the beginning demands the cooperation of the audience in integrating his

motives and actions into a coherent whole. During the arc of bis portrayal in the various

pageants, Joseph provides a bridge that dows, even compels, the audience's imagination

to nin fiom the play-world to the real world, fiom past to present, and fkom doubt to faith.

Joseph begins and is begun with principles that bear resemblance to those

recommended by rhetoricians. In his Poefria nova, ûeoffiey of Vinsauf argues that there

are oniy a few ways in which to begin a story: one can begin with the beginning, with the

"9 David biills argues, in fact, that "some [characters] are so 6agmented as to demand an act of reintegration by a a o r and audience." "Characterùation in the English Mystery Cycles: A Critical: Prologue," Medieval English neaire 5 (1983) 12.

135

middle, with the end, or with a proverb. Beginning at the beginning of the plot, Geoffrey

t e k us, is undesirable; the other combinations are classified as "artistic," and thus to be

preferred.'"' The York Joseph, it is to be noted, is begun in the Mdde of the plot, rather

than with the initiai discovery of Mary's pregnancy. This fact makes him unique among his

parailels. When the audience meets him, the York Joseph has gone through his initial

shock, has questioned Mary, has decided to fie--and yet, in order for there to be a play at

aii, he must go back to speak to her again, as ifto give her another chance. In addition, in

order for the back-story to be known to the audience, Joseph must speak to them diredy,

and he does, so that the situation and his state of rnind both become revealed at once.

Joseph begins by a simple yet complete portrayal of himself-both his current mood

and his habitua1 nature. These two aspects of character were recognized in several

writings on rhetoric, and indeed they formed a category of school exercise for centuries

after their introduction into Latin thought by Priscian.*'* In addition to these two aspects

of himself, Joseph also covers his rnanner of We, his fortunes, his habits, his feelings,

interests, purposes, accidents, aii in a manner that Cicero wouid have recognized. Yet

whatever the influence or lack thereof of such writers upon the York playwri@t, there is

no doubt that Joseph's initial speech is a seemingly oxyrnoronic marvel of encyclopaedic

economy. More significant, however, is the way in which this play depicts Joseph as

someone tom between legalistic and domestic interests, and that it does so by

contextuaiizing the domestic within the legalistic. So far, these contentions may seem

'm Poeiria rlova 87; Gallo 18- 19, Nims 2 1-23.

"' S pecht, "Ethopoeia" 5.

136

obvious. What is perhaps less obvious is the series of roles in which the audience itself is

placed in reaction to these roles of Joseph. First as potentially hostile jurors, then as

spying onlookers, 6nally as feiiow Chnstians with Joseph, the audience gradudy grows

nearer to the charaaer over the course of the play, or perhaps one should say finds the

character growing closer to them, as the spheres of legality and domesticity becorne

reconciied and, ultimately, sanctifïed. While mon literary characters in their initial

entrance have no immediate history, that is not m e of biblical characters in relation to the

audience, whose horizon of expectations has been established already. Nonetheless, even

biblical characters are malleable, and the way in which the appeal to the expectations of

the audience can Vary widely.

For exarnple, Joseph may well make his initial appearance before the wagon roUs

into place,*" thus appearing alone before a crowd of onlookers, as the Doctor in the

previous Annunciation play may have done. Joseph's rhetoric instantly demands the

listeners' attention, and demands also active participation in the resolution of the judicial

questions of his and Mary's innocence or guilt. Joseph begins the play tike a hunted man

and Iike a conscious rhetor also, excusing his appearance before the audience with a

prgatio in necessitate," explaining that his age prevents any more dignified appauance:

For nowe ban wende 1 best hafe bene

242 My observations and speculations conceming the play of "Joseph's Trouble About Mary" are drawn largely fiom a production of the play that 1 directed, and that was perfonned at the SITM conference in Toronto in the summer of 1995.

Rhetorica ad Herennium, ed. and trans. Harry Caplan, Loeb Classical Library 403 (Cambridge, MA: Han-ard UP, 1954) i.xiv.24,45.

Att ease and reste by reasoune ay.

For 1 am of grete elde,

Wayke and al vnwelde,

As ilke man se it maye;

1 may nowder buske ne belde

But owther in fiithe or felde;

For sharne what sa11 1 saie[?] (York 13/3-10).

Unlike the Doctor who has dazzied the audience with his wiiiing rhetoric in the preceding

"Annunciationw play, Joseph seems to have been dragged on unwillingly to face a jury of

his peers, and p e r s who have already been convinced of his guilt.

If'the hearers have been convinced, if our opponent's speech has gained

their credence [...] we s h d use Indecision, dong with an exclamation of

astonishrnent: " M a t had 1 best say?" or "To what point s h d 1 first

reply?"

By positing the need for an excuse, and for the need to gain the audience's sympathy

rather than being presumed to have it, Joseph not only casts himeif in the role of accused,

but also casts the audience in the role of h o d e jury. In addition, the use of questions,

even rhetorical ones, explicitly invites the audience to make judgements. Such a tactic is

sirnilar to that at the end of the Brome "Abraham and Isaac" play, when the doctor asks

the audience,

2M "Si persuasus auditor, si oratio adversariomm fecent fidem auditoribus [...] dubitatione utemur quid potissimum dicamus aut cui loco primum respondeamus, cum adrniratione." adiïerennium i.iv. 10, 18-1 9.

Trowe 3e, sorys, and God sent an angeîl

And cornmawndyd 30w 3owre chyld to slayn,

Be 3owre trowthe ys ther ony of 30w

That eyther wold groche or stryve therageyn?

How thyngke 3e now, sorys, therby?

1 trow ther be t h e ore a fowr or moo (443 -448).24s

It is of course an open question whether the audience is willing to play that role. But

Joseph's rhetonc, with its questioning and its musing about what other people will do to

him, forces a fictional audience to arise; the audience becomes aware that Joseph is talking

about them. The audience thus begins to have a split role--partly fhithftl Christians

beholding their sacred history, and p d y people sitting in judgement.

Thus Joseph instantly creates a kind of ritual space for the process of judgement .

Within that space, the fictional audience is hoped to be attentive and sympathetic to

Joseph's case. AccordïngIy, Joseph follows this opening or imimatio with narratio, or

recounting of the facts. During his monologue, he constantly stresses his lack of guilt by

cIaiming necessity or lack of understanding: "1 ne wist what it ment" (York 13/30),

"[Tlhay saide to me fonhy/bat with a wiffe 1 sulde be wedde" (York 13/33-34), "1 am

begiled - how, wate 1 n03tn (York 13/42), "To gabbe yf 1 wolde p a p e me,/Pe lawe

standis harde agayne me" (York 1 3/48-49). Thus Joseph excuses hirnself for marrying

someone much younger than himsew, for her unexpected pregnancy, and for his

'" NoiiCycIe Plays und Fragments, ed. Norman Davis, EETS S.S. 1 (London: M o r d UP, 1970) 43-57.

139

appearance before this jury in fU admission of the &S. The audience becomes aware of

a role that they perhaps do not wish to play. They begin to perceive Joseph's spiritual

blindness as a forrn of misinterpretation of themselves. Their role as faithttl Christians is

challenged by the role of judges that Joseph's rhetoric foists upon them.

Yet sprllikled throughout this extended ptrrgatio are references to other actions for

which Joseph does take responsibility, and for which he asks no judgement: "And lathe

methinkeb, on be todir syde,/My wiffwith any man to defame" (York 13/5 1-52); "Ofmy

wendyng wil 1 non warne,/Neuere Be lees it is myne e n t e n t d o aske hir who gate hir bat

barne,/3 itt wolde 1 witte fayne or 1 wenten (York 13/7 1-74). These statements refer

specifically to Mary's character and actions, rather than to the brute facts of her bioiogical

state. They thus begin to cast Joseph in a different light fiom before: now he is playing the

role of guardian, even if it is a guardian who is thinking of fleeing his charge.

Thus Joseph begins also to entertain thoughts relating not to the juridical sphere

but to the domestic; and in that sphere the audience has a very different set of roles.

Joseph's statements that he wïii teil nobody about either Mary's pregnancy or his tlight

belie, for the first tirne, the audience's presence. Thus the audience is no longer in the role,

exactly, ofjurors; or, rather, that role has had an additional nuance added to it. Now they

are disemôodied spectators, overhearuig the play rather than immediately participating in

it. They are, perhaps, engaging in a p&ticularly concretized form of visuaiization such as

that recommended by such devotional works as the Medita~iones vitae Christi. If so, then

their role as faithfiil Christians is now buttressed rather than subverted, and yet they do not

yet lose their role as judges, because the issues that Joseph has raiseci have not yet been

resolved by the play's plot.

Whiie this monologue has been going on, the wagon has most probably rolled up

and been set up. Thus the rituai juridical space created by Joseph's orarion has been

disrupted by the introduction of domestic space. Now, when Joseph goes into his house,

the audience will go with him, as spectators overhearing and yet stiii judging the events

before them.

Joseph, upon entering the house, begins with a line that wili become typical of the

character f?om that point through the rest of the cycle: "AU hayle, God be heruuie"

(1 3/75). It seerns a straightforward enough greeting, yet it also says far more than the

character would seem to intend. The first two words, "Ail hayle," echo the angel's

greeting of Mary, while the three remaining words, "God be herime," state the lniraculous

fact that will exonerate both Joseph and Mary and indeed the rest of humanity: God is

indeed herein, both within Mary and within the house, and, by extension, withïn the place

where the play is enacted. This signficatio p r mbiguum'M is used for the conveyance

of divine tmths of which Joseph is not aware. The same happens with Joseph's question

to the maids, "Whare is bt aonge virgine/Marie, my berde so bright?" (York 13/77-78).

What seems to be an intended unfiphrusis is, in fact, a iiteral description of one of Mary's

mon important charactenstics, her perpetual virginity. The character is thus placed in the

light o f a panicular form of dramatic irony, one in which he remains for the rea of his

ponrayal in the York Cycle. Joseph seems to be guided by Providence without knowing

it.

'" ad Herennium iv. liii.66, 400-40 1 .

141

This dramatic uony is triggered in Joseph by his actual attempts to interact with

Mary; those attempts continue to trigger responses in Joseph that undemine his ability to

accuse his wife. Although he asks her the direct question, "Whose ist Marie?" (York

1311 03) in some form or other six tirnes, and receives some variation on "Sir, Goddis and

youres" (York 13/103) an equal number of times, he is not able to direct much more than

that against her. His opening garnbit to Mary, far fiom being neat or focussed, is instead a

mess of indirection:

Gramercy Marie, saie what chere,

Telle me soth, how est with be?

Wha has ben there?

Thy wombe is waxen grete, thynke me,

Pou arte with bame, allas for care.

A, maidens, wa worthe 3ou,

Pat lete hir lere swilke lare (York 13/92-98).

A mixture of pleasantries, direct but awkward questioning, a statement of very obvious

fact followed by a completely umecessary qualification by opinion, another statement of

very obvious fact foilowed by an exclamation of woe, and finally a cciregoriu directed not

at Mary but at her maids-di of it adds up not to an effective accusation, but instead to an

expression ofputhos bordering on bathos.

In modem performance, such as at the SITM conference in Toronto in 1995, the

pufhos does indeed seem to topple over into bathos. The modem audience laughs at

Joseph's consternation rather than weeping at it, and no wonder. Whether the medieval

142

audience did so is another matter. Arnold Williams has noted how diflicult it is to be sure:

"Comedy is notoriously abject to the accidents of time and space. [...] It is quite possible

that what we see as fhny was utterly serious" to the medieval audience, as nineteenth-

century rnelodrama seems to have been taken seriously by its audiences but is considered

camp t~day.'~' Nonetheless, the scenes of Joseph's consternation may well have been

hnny to a medieval audience for the following reason done: there is in fact nothing for

Joseph to weep about, though he does not know it. Mary is, of course, telling the tmth,

and Joseph is, indeed, "begiied," though not in the way in which he thinks. Jmss observes,

"The cornic hero is not comic in himself but agaïnst the horizon of certain expectations; he

is comic because he negates those expectations or noms.""6 By making Joseph fùmy,

the playwright calls attention to those expectations and noms and reidorces them through

laughter at the one who negates-or tries to negatethem.

It would be easy to disrniss Joseph as a mere fool at this point, but to do so would

ignore the s W way in which the text, which has worked to alienate the audience, also

works to draw them in.

[JOSEPH:] But who is be fader? Telle me his name.

MARLA: None but yourselfe.

JOSEPH: Late be, for shame.

1 did it neuere; bou dotist dame, by bukes and belles!

"'"~he Comic in the Cycles," Medieval Drama, ed. Neville Demy. Stratford-upon- Avon S tudies 1 6 (London: Edward Arnold, 1973) 1 14- 1 1 S.

"' Hans Robert Jauss, A esthetic Experiertce und Lzferary Henneneutics, tram Michael Shaw. Theory and History of Literature 3 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982) 19 1.

Full sakies shulde 1 bere bis blame aftir b u t e k - . . .

Yhitt for myn awne 1 wolde it fede,

Might al1 be stiii;

Parfore pe fadir tell me, Marie.

MARIA: But God and yhow, 1 knaw nght nane.

JOSEPH: 4 stike sawes mase me hl1 sarye,

With grete momyng to make my mane.

(York 13/177-180, 185-190)

Joseph's lines run on hypermetncdy for the 6rst and only tirne in the play, cation of

a loss of temper and c o n t r ~ l . * ~ ~ Yet Joseph also attempts to make peace, offering to care

for the child "for myn awne." Later, he also assures Mary, "Sertis, ber sail none witte but

we.A drede Be law ais wele as thou" (York 1 Wl99-ZOO). In these bes, Joseph attempts

to identiQ himseE in the Burkean ens se,^' with Maq, by assexting that his intereas are

the same as hers: care of the child, and fear of the law. His failure lies in the fact that

Mary has no fear of the Iaw because of her child. In failing to idente Mary as the

"maiden to be with childe" (York 13/21 1) of prophecy-"Sho is not borne 1 wene," he

says (York 1 3/2 1 3)--Joseph casts himself in the wrong role, as cuckold, and leaves himself

no ability to overcome his alienation fiom Mary through conscious identification. He

cannot understand her situation and therefore her motives.

The audience, of course, knows of Mary's situation but, through Joseph's

"9 Epp. "Visible Words" 294.

''O Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric ofMorives (Berkeley: U of California P, 1962) 55-58.

144

confusion, is made sharply aware that they carmot understand it either, at least not dirough

logic. Only through faith is comprehension of the Incarnation possible; the fdure of

Joseph to understand based upon his legalistic and domestic premises demonstrates the

fact vividly, as does his subsequent visit by the angel, which miraculously clarifies matters.

When this visitation happens, Joseph's reconciliation with Mary also occurs.

Rosernary Woolfdeclares that this Little scene "is too perfiinctody done to deserve

mention, ""' but in performance it can be deeply moving because of, not despite, its

brevity- Joseph, in planning his apology, notes, "Me bus pray hir hdde me excused,/Als

Som men dose with full gud chere" (York 13/288-289); thus he once again acknowledges

the audience's presence, though obliquely. Also, since the angel's appearance to Joseph,

the audience's original horizon of expectations regarding the virginïty of Mary has been

reaffirmed, and Joseph has shared in that reafirmation. Thus the audience does not

identiQ with Joseph per se; rather, Joseph has been identifïed with the audience. The

audience's roles as jurors and overseers have been exploded, and now Joseph, having

moved fiom accused to guardian to member of the faithfiil, is ready to play a new set of

roles that combine al1 of the spheres of which his character has had a part: "Marie, 1 am to

blame," juridical, "gadir same now al1 oure gere," domestic, "Till Bedlem bus me it bere,"

sacramental. Joseph is not only "there to turn the theological mystery of the Inmat ion

into a homely, human event,"'" but also to tum homely, human events into the contexts

for that theological mystery, and to show their limitations at the same time. The

"' Wooic Engfish Mysiery P l q s 173.

"<' Kolve, Play Caffed Corps Christi 247-248.

145

audience's roles in the juridicai and domestic spheres give way before their role as fathfûl

Chnstians even as Joseph's do.

In identifjhg Joseph with the audience, the play brings his expectations into line

with theirs; through the temporary splittîng and reconciliation of theirs, it also brings relief

and reassures them that their original set of beliefs and expectations regarding the Vïrgin

Birth and the Incarnation of God are indeed valid; yet it aiso shows that those expectations

and beliefs are a matter of faith and not reason. Thus, the play of "Joseph's Trouble about

Mary" is a subtle and mastehi piece of theatrical and devotional rhetonc, reassuring

where people may not even have thought that they needed reassurance, and thus positing

that they did whether or not they had thought so. Ultimately, the audience plays the role

of faitffil Christians in need of reassurance, and Joseph plays the role of one whose

conversion provides that reassurance.

This role continues and expands throughout the rest of Joseph's story within the

York Cycle. Ln "The Nativity" and in the late "Purification," Joseph helps to provide

interpretive links between the action on stage and analogous rites and rituais known to the

audience; his reactions serve as gIoss to both. A key dserence between the earlier play

and the later, however, is the apparent lack of awareness Joseph displays in the latter of

the audience's presence. Much of his role in this respect is taken over by Simeon, Anna,

and the Priest, a reflection, perhaps, of the changing public perception of, and increasing

devotion to, the saint.2s3

Joseph's next appearance in the cycle, at the beginning of "The Nativity," continues

'" Mahon, "Origin and Development" 186-1 87.

to create a tension between the world of the play and the world of the audience, and to

induce implied roles for the audience to play, roles that emphasize the need for fath and

which place faith W y within earthly wntexts.

Joseph's opening iines in the play posit the audience as present but unaware of the

charaaers' true situation; refemng to "bis place where we are pightJOureself allone"

(York 14/44), he nonetheless declares that "So mekiii pepuil is comen to towneibat we

can nowhere herbered be,/ber is slike prees" (York 14/10-12). The audience here is cast

in the role of an ignorant crowd rnilling about an orduiary-looking couple, neither aware of

nor concemed about the pregnant woman with no place to harbour herself Because the

real audience knows the story, this is most iikely not a role that they might have been

willing to play; nonetheless, it is the role that is implied.

The audience's separation fiom the characters extends to the moment of the

Nativity itself The staging of this moment is not entirety clear fiom the manuscript; the

only indications are Mary's dialogue. Without any particular waming, she exclaims,

Jesu my son bat is so dere,

Nowe borne is he.

Hayle my lord God, hayle prince of pees,

Hayle my fadir, and hayle my sone;

Hayle souereyne sege al1 synnes to sesse (York 14/55-59),

and continues with a series of such panegyric lines. The Christ-child's fira appearance is

certainiy on the ground, for Maq shortly afterwards asks, "VowchesafFe, swete sone 1

pray pe,/That 1 myght pe take in pe armys of myne" (York 14/65-66). This lifting of the

Christ child may have had rnnemonic resonances with the Mas; if it is so that "aii late

medieval body feasts of Mary [are] also meditation on the gift, both joyful and so~owful,

of corprrs C h r i ~ t i , " ~ then Mary's elevation of the Christ chiid into visibility may have had

an effect reminiscent of that of the elevation of the Host.

The sacramental moment echoed here is a moment both of tension as well as

holiness. The visible evidence of the Host was paramount to the faith of the medieval

Christian-indeed, it was the moment of communion for most Iay peopte most of the the-

but it was also the occasion of doubts because, &er ail, "[tlhe Host did not look like the

thing it was": a problem that ofcupied much of late medieval Eucharistie tho~ght .~ '

Joseph's role in the Nativity play, S i e his role in the "Joseph's Trouble" play, is to

negotiate that confusion, and to enable the audience to place itself in a position of faith.

Mary's delivery of Christ takes place before the eyes of the audience but out of the

sight of Joseph, whose concern at the moment of Christ's birth is not exactly worldly, but

certainly material:

4 lorde God what be wedir is colde,

De fellest freese bat euere 1 felyd.

1 pray God helpe barn bat is alde

And namely barn bat is vnwelde,

So may 1 saie.

Now gud God bou be my bilde

'-H Gibson, 7neater of Devotion 166.

D u e , Stripping of the Altars 102.

As bou best may (York l4/7 1-77).

Here, Joseph's concern is related to the protective, domestic sphere that was so important

to the character in his initial appearance. It also provides an additional fictionalizing

element and rnakes further demands upon the audience's imagination o f themselves. 'fhe

actual performance of the play, of course, t w k place in late May or in June. By making

his rernarks about the coldness of the weather, Joseph invites the audience to imagine

themselves not only as the unseeing crowd of the play's introduction, but also as sufferers

at the hands of the elements Oce hirnselt For a medieval populace in a nonhern region,

whose experiences of winter were without the amenities of modem technology, such an

imaginative projection must not have been too great a strain. Joseph's invocation of the

physical at the moment of Christ's birih is not, however, a mere aspect of the appearance

of "naturd man,"z6 still less a symbol of spiritual blindness. Rather, as a rhetoric.

strategy it emphasizes the physicaiity of the event and therefore of Christ's humanity, like

the more famous cornplaints about wintefs cold in the Towneley "Second Shepherd's

Play.""' Joseph, then, invites the audience to put aside the present experience of their

own senses, and to participate imaginatively in the expenence of Christ's incarnation.

Appropriately, Joseph's cornplaint about the cold is juxtaposed with his sudden

noticing of the Light of salvation:

A, lord God, what Light is Pis

Dat cornes shy-nyng bus sodenly?

Kolve, Play Caffed Corpus Christi 247f

"' Towneley Pfàys 1 26- 1 27.

1 can not saie als haue 1 blisse.

When 1 corne home vnto Marie

Pan saLl 1 spirre (York 14/78-82).

Joseph is at this tirne in a different relationship to the audience than at the beginning of the

play. Then, he posited the audience as being unseeing whiie he rernained aware of the

situation; now, those roles are reversed. By wondering at the lïght, by declaring that he

does not know or understand, Joseph reinforces the point that the audience has, on the

other hand, seen; thus he serves to shore up the irnpiied audience's position of faith by

contrast with himself

That contrast is not based, however, upon a lack of faith on Joseph's part; rather, it

is based upon his simple lack of knowledge through experience. Upon Joseph's return, he

appears not to notice what has happened at fist; upon d i s c o v e ~ g the tmth, his reaction is

not one of disbelief but rather of surprise.

JOSEPH: Say Marie, doghtir, what chere with be?

MARIA: Right goode Joseph, as has been ay.

JOSEPH: O Marie, what swete thyng is bat on thy kne?

MARIA: It is my sone, Be soth to saye,

Dat is so gud.

JOSEPH: Wele is me I bade bis day

To se bis foode (York 14/85-9 1).

Joseph now cornes belatedly into the position into which he and Mary have already

induced the audience: into that of a witness to Christ's nativity.

As in "Joseph's Trouble," it is not the case that the audience identifies with Joseph

per se; rather, Joseph and Mary manoeuver the implied audience into a position with

which Joseph is subsequentiy identifiecl. The identification of Joseph with the audience

then is exploited in a forma1 expression of faith, one of many such lmdatiooes of Christ in

the York Cycle:

Nowe welcome, floure fairest of hewe,

1 shall be menske with mayne and myght.

Hayle my maker, hayle Crist Jesu,

Hayl ri& kyng, roote of al1 right,

Hayle saueour,

Hayle my lorde, lemer of light,

Hayie blessid floure (York l4/lO6-ll2).

Like its analogues in the cycle, Joseph's Imdatio uses alliteration of sofi consonants,

mlaphora, expolitio, excIma~io-in short, numerous rhetorical devices in a very

compressed space-to achieve a mixture of formal elegance and a high emotional pitch. In

particular, the repeîitive devices are a kind of verbal analogue to the idea of divine stiilness

which underlies ail medieval drama.u' That stillness is underpinned by the next

appearance of Joseph, and of Mary, during "The Shepherds," in which the silence of the

Holy Family eerily foreshadows the silence of Christ during the York Cycle's long trial

sequence.

Johnston, "Word Made Flesh" 225-246.

151

During the brief remainder of "The Nativity," Joseph observes the behaviour of the

ox and the ass (York lWl22- l26), interprets a prophecy of Habbakuk regarding those

beasts (York l4/l37- 14 1)- and, subsequently, dedicates himseif to the Christ child. III

other words, Joseph acts as one who weighs evidence and cornes to a personal decision.

Ln doing so, he seems to take the opposite course fiom Augustine's advice, "Do not seek -

to understand in order to believe; but believe in order to under~tand."~~ Yet Joseph's

declaration is not one of initiai faith; Joseph's faith preceded the event of Christ's nativity,

as we have already seen. Rather, it is a declaraîion of loyalty to his lord, and an invitation

to the audience to make sirnilar dedarations themselves. Furthemore, Joseph's process of

arriving at that dedaration-that of hith based on signs and authorities-is one that

Augustine himself understood very welLua

Homoure and worshippe both day and nyght,

Ay-lastand lorde, be done to be

Allway, as is worthy;

And lord, to thy seruice 1 oblissh me

With al1 myn herte, holy (York 14/143-147).

Joseph plays a peculiar role in the Holy Family, at least as portrayed in the York Cycle. if

259 11 CNJoli quaerere intelligere, ut credas, sed crede ut intelligas." In J m n i s Evangefizm mciatus 2916, in Patro/ogïa Latimz, ed. Migne, 35.1630. My translation.

'60 " m i d e s aliquid, ut credas aliquid, et ex eo quod vides, credas quod non v idef lou see sornething so that you may believe sornething, and fkorn what you do see you may beiieve what you don? see", Senno 126, 2.3, Patroiogia Latina, ed. Migne 38.699; and "Dupliciter ducimur, auctoritate atque r a t i o n m e are led in two ways, by authority and by reason", De ordine libri ii 2, 9.26, Patroiogia Latina, ed. Migne 32.1007. My translations.

Chria is the Saviour incarnate and Mary the divine Mrgin, then Joseph is the fht

Christian. Lacking the direct bodily experiences of the divine of both of the other two,

absent from both the beginning and end of MWs pregnancy, Joseph has no choice but

faith based on signs and authorities.

"The Flight into Egypt," in contrast, finds Joseph dwelling on his own helplessness.

As in his ruminations at the beginning of "Joseph's Trouble," Joseph's openhg speech

notes his "syrnpplenes" and claims, "1 waxe as wayke as any wande,/For febill me fayles

both foote and hande" (York 18/16, 17- 18). But he also notes his reliance on God more

strongly than in previous appearances, and in a way that is different eom what the

audience has seen of him before.

Thow maker bat is most of myght,

To thy rnercy 1 make my mone;

Lord, se vnto bis symple wight

Pat hase non helpe but pe ailotie.

For al1 bis woride 1 haue forsaken,

And to thy semice 1 haue me taken

With witte and d l

For to ftlfill

Di commaundement (York 1 811 -9).

This opening speech is simiiar in several respects to those of Noah, Abraham, and Moses

in the York Cycle's Old Testament plays: beginning with an alliterating epithet to God, it

continues with a c l a h of dependance upon him, and notes the difnculties that the speaker

153

faces. Unlike those speeches, however, it does not contain a statement of the charactefs

history, or of thanks for God's help. In the former case, nich a statement is needIess given

the audience's long acquaintance with Joseph; in the second, it is this episode that wiii

supply the occasion for such a statement. In this episode, the audience witnesses Joseph,

whom it now knows as humble, multifaceted, an expert in the Law and a bridge to the

Gospels, as he becomes the equivalent of an Old Testament patriarch.

While Joseph prays to God the Father, Mary prays to her son, God incarnate.

Such a ciifference may seem to signal a kind of gap between the old and new

dispensations, but any such distinction soon becomes blurred. For the 6 r s t time, Joseph

becomes the centre of the action, when the angel appears not to Mary but to him (York

18/37-62). Foliowing the warning to flee corn Egypt, Joseph speaks two stanzas that

reinforce his previously created position as a Iegalistic thinker and a domestic actor:

Aye-lastand lord, loved mott bou be

That thy we te sande wolde to me sende.

But lorde, what ayles pe kyng at me,

For vnto hym 1 neuere offende?

As wonhy is

Pou kyng of blisse,

Bi wiii be wrought.

Marie my doughtir dere,

On Be is dl my bought (York 1 8/63-66, 8 1-85).

While it may seem at first that Joseph's question, "[Wlhat ayles pe kyng at me[?]" is a

minor exarnple of blindness-it is, aiter di, the child and not the stepfather that the king

wishes to Ml-it is really not so. Instead, Joseph's d w e h g on his specifïc innocence in

relation to the king, and on the aprion' innocence of "Smaie songe barnes bat neuere did

iile, " shows a concem with different f o m of culpabiliv, his twning to Mary, his

"doughtir," again recalls his role, both legal and domestic, that the audience already

knows. But the key feature of Joseph's speech is pathetic. By lamenting his fate, by

ponraying the i~ocence of children, by turning to the Virgin with the words, "De chere of

me is done for ay" (York 18/87), Joseph invites the audience to step into the scene and

lament with him. Joseph does not directly manipulate the audience by referring them into

different roles; on the contmy, in none of the speeches in the play does Joseph even

acknowledge the audience's presence. While the York Cycle's strong sense of place does,

perhaps, place the audience implicitly in the roie of other endangered families, such is not

the primasr fom of manipulation. Rather, the manipulation cornes fiom the invitation to

sympathy that mns throughout the play. While Joseph's anguish in "Troubles" is ironic,

and white Mary has untii now remained self-contained and aloof fiom trouble, the events

of this play bring them both for the first tirne into real danger and ernotional anguish, an

opportunity of which the playwright makes the greatea effm.

Joseph once again employs means to move the audience that ancient rhetoricians

wouid have recognized; the Rherorica ad Herennium States baldly enough, "The Pathetic,

by arnplfig misfortunes, wins the hearer over to pity.""' Joseph indeed multiplies

misforn>nes and also tidings of misforîunes in this play. He repeats or aliudes to, no less

than six times, the news that Herod is about to slaughter chiidren (York 18/67-70, 10 1 - 1 01, 1 1 1 - 1 1 2, 1 1 5- 120, 150- 1 55, 160- 16 1); he mentions his sadness at being exiled and

his fear of lingering (York 18/90-93, 132-134); he rerninds the audience of his willingness

to bear al1 burdens despite his weakness (York 1 8/ 164- 1 70); he admits, mon patheticdy

of d, that he has no idea where Egypt is (York 18/179-180). Cumulatively, he builds up

a self-portrait of seeming helplessness.

Of course, Joseph is not the only one to do so. The helplessness in Mary's portrait

is even stronger, and is in direct contrast to the confident, even aloof character that the

Vigin has heretofore seemed in the York Cycle. No longer the seerningly unmovable and

inscrutable being of "Joseph's Trouble," she here is overcome with emotion, becoming an

image for the first time of the somowtùl Vigin of the Crucifixion. Her fear paralyses her,

however, preventing her from taking any usenil action; al1 she is able to do is to "durk,

[. . .] dare" (York 18/106), and lament:

FIARIAI : 1 ware fûil d e of wane

My sone and he shulde dye,

And 1 haue but bym allone.

JOSEPH: We, Ieue Marie, do way, late be!

1 pray pe, leue of thy dynne,

'6' "Conquestio est oratio quae incommodorum amplificatione animum auditoris ad misericordiam perducit." ad Heren~izm iii.xiii.24, 198- 199.

And fmde he fiirthe faste for to flee (York 18/144-149).

Joseph's response to Mary's heiplessness is to take charge himselfof the situation; his

doing so climaxes in an astonishing iconographie moment.

[JOSEPHJ: GyfYrne hym, late me bere hym awhile.

MARIA: I thanke you of youre grete goode dede;

Now gud Joseph tue hym take hede

JOSEPH: Late me and hyrn ailone

(York 1 811 98-2OO,2W).

The effect of Joseph's takuig the Christ child in his arms is somewhat dficult to describe.

Near the beginning of the play, John Clerke wrote, "This matter is mayd of newe after

anoper form;" this note was later crossed If Clerke was initially citing accurate

information, then the play as we have it is a mid-sixteenth-cenw revision. Such a date

might make sense, given that portrayals of Joseph with the Christ child in his arms seem

first to have emerged around that time." Of course, the detail may be the response to a

practical problem as well. Suice the play specines that the actor playing Mary must ride

off (presumably on a donkey), holding on "faste by pe mane" (York 18/206), the

traditional picture of the Vugin nding while holding the child may have been found

"' Beadle, York Plcrys 437; Richard Beadle and Peter Merideth, eds. Tne York Play: A Facsimiie of British Library rMS A&itionaI 35290. Together with a Facsimiie of the Ordo Paginarurn Section of the AlYMernorandÙrn Book. Leeds: U of Leeds, 1 983. E 75.

x3 Warner , Aione of Alf Her Sex 189.

impossible to nage. Nonetheless, the image of Joseph holding the chiid while leading

donkey and Vugin remains; Mary has bem reduced even further to a patheticdy helpless

figure than Joseph, wtule Joseph taka the lead, strengthened not by himseifbut by God: "1

haue oure helpe here in myn anne" (York 18/224).

That the nrst real danger that Christ faces should be the subject ofparhos, and thus

an occasion for afkdivi ty , is hardly surprising. But it is not yet Chnst who is the actor in

the drama ofpwthos; Joseph and Mary, rather, must fiiW that place in their respective

ways. In their helplessness, they invite the kind of pity that Nicholas Love recommends:

Lord how dide bei b r e of hire lyuelode, or where rested bi & were

herbored in pe nyates, for in bat wey fonde bei f i l seldome any house.

Here ought we to haue inwardly compassion of hem, & no3t be lobe or

benk trauailous to do penance for Our self sipen ober token so gret & so oft

trauaiie for vs, namely bi bat weren so noble & so ~ o r b i . ~ ~

Furthermore, they do so, as we have seen, through the multiplying of woes that ancient

rhetoricians recommended, and through a fin& almost belated reference to the audience's

p resence.

[JOSEPH]: Late vs goo with good chere-

Farewele and haue gud day--

God blisse vs al1 in fere.

MARIA: Amen as he beste may (York 1 8/228-23 1).

Referring to the audience not as "you" but as "us," identifjing the audience with

'a Love, Minor 5 1.

158

themselves, Joseph and Mary beat a hasty retreat down the sveets of York, leaving some

of the audience behind and, possibly, taking some with them. Yet in dohg so, they create

an implied cornmunit. of pity around them. The audience, reminded however willingly or

reluctantly that the play is about "us," watches the pathetic renlgees go and prepares itself

for the horrors that are to foiiow, both in the Slaughter of the Innocents and, by

implication, in the later Passion sequence. If the audience may have been less reluctant to

play such a roIe than certain others it has played, the violence of the foiiowing "Slaughter"

may make up for such willinpess. Yet the audience also will find that its identification

with the Holy Family, and especially with Joseph, is soon to be disengaged.

The lm York play in which Joseph appears, "Christ and the Doctors," begins with

a disorienting break in the action and chronology. The audience has just witnessed the

slaughter from which the Holy Family has run away, a slaughter which the Holy Family

has nonetheless haunted verbaiiy:

W A : ] I ware full wille of wane

My sone and he shulde dye,

And 1 have but hym d o n e (York l8 / lU- 146).

[n MULIER:] Be knyght vppon his kn@e

Hath s l ape my sone so swette,

And 1 hadde but hyrn allone (York 19/2 13-2 1 5) .

After this slaughter and the laments of the mothers, Joseph and Mary reappear, casually

walking down the streets without their son, speaking at their ease:

JOSEPH: Marie, of mîrthis we may vs mene,

And trewiy telle betwixte vs twoo

Of solempne sightis bat we haue sene

In bat cité where we corne fkoo.

M A U : Sertis Joseph, 3e will no3t wene

What myrthis withui my harte 1 maie,

Sen bat oure sone with vs has bene

And sene ther solempne sightis alswae (York 20/ 1-8).

The break signals the end of one sequence in the York Cycle and the beginning of another,

it also peniiits, indeed induces, the audience to readjust its thinking about the play,

becoming newly aware of its dramaturgy and structure. Through his brief appearances in

this play, Joseph guides this audience through this readjustment .

He does so by speaking in ways that point to different aspects of the dramatic

simation simultaneously. Upon her discovery that Jesus is rnissing, Mary b e d i a t e l y

repeats the same panicked behaviour as in "The Flight into Egypt": "A, sir, where is oure

semely sone?/I trowe oure wittis be waste and wynde./Allas, in baie pus am 1 boone"

(York 20115-17). Joseph replies, not by partaking of her grief, but by making an

observation that is at once scriptural, dramaturgical, and literary :

Marie, mende thy chere,

For cenis what ail is done

He cornes with folke in feere,

And will ouertake vs sone (York 2012 1-24)-

Scnpturally, this observation echoes the detail that Joseph and Mary at first thought "that

160

he was in the c ~ r n p a n ~ " ~ ~ ~ j u s t behind them (Luke 2:44). Drarnaturgically, it is a statement

of a literal fact : the actor(s) playing Jesus, and the various "foke in feere" of the

subsequent plays, are indeed jus behind the actors playing Joseph and Mary, and will

indeed overtake them in less than fifty lines-perhaps three minutes of playing time.

Lndeed, the audience would almon certainly, at certain stations, have been able to see or

hear the "feere" approaching at that moment. Finaiiy, it is aiso true that this play marks

the end of the infancy narrative and the beginning of Christ's rninistry, so that Jesus alone

wiil soon "ouertaken and surpass the Holy Family in both iiterary and theological senses.

This heaviiy polyvalent quatrain is not only a reply to Mary's panic but aiso a reply

to the audience's possible reactions. Reminding them of the dramaturgical reaiity of the

play, and also of the importance of Christ, Joseph prepares the audience to disengage its

fbll attention from the story of the Holy Family, so that it can focus instead upon the story

of Christ's rninistry and passion. This process continues through the first section of the

play; while Mary continues to cry out pathetic appeals, Joseph provides suggestions of

action, aii of which emphasise the need to search for Christ, and the surety of hd ing him:

1 wende he hadde bene with vs aye,

Awaye 60 vs how schulde he wyle? (York 20129-30).

Agaynewarde rede 1 bat we gang

The right way to bat sarne citee,

To spire and spie all men arnang,

265 b'illum esse in cornitatu"

For hardely homward gone is he (York 20139-42)-

What way someuere he wendis

Woman, we may be balde

To fjmde hym with oure fiendis (York 20/46-48).

Joseph's reassurances to Mary, of course, are directly based on Scripture; they are also,

however, answers to the emotional response not oniy of Mary but also of the audience.

M e r the emotionai appeals of the "Slaughter," the audience may be prepared to react in

the same way to the emotional appeals of Mary in this play, and to re-enact the emotional

prefiguring of Christ's eventual sacrifice. But literally, there is no danger; Christ is merely

speaking with the doaors in the temple. Consequently, while Joseph's assurances have the

same note of authority as his taking command in the Wight imo Egypt," they have none

of the same emotional appeal. The disparity between the emotion ponrayed on the stage,

and that encouraged to develop in the audience, l a d s the audience to accept that the role

of the Holy Farnily is corning to a close; affectivity with the Holy Farnily no longer

provides a sure guide to the events to came.

Following the scene in the temple, in which Christ appears for the first tirne as a

speaking being, Joseph retums with Mary for his last appearance in the York Cycle. In his

h a 1 scene, he completes his disengagement, and takes his leave. He accomplishes the

former by reminding the audience of his temporal, human side, protesting that he cannot

speak with the doctors in the temple because "They are so gay in fùrres @nen and because

" I cars nowthir cro ke nor knele" (York 2O/23 2, 240). His poverty and age are reasserted

162

for the fint Mie in a long while, as is his concem with law. His awareness of the eanhly

laws of propnety, and his fleshiy feebleness, will not allow him to make the final joumey

to h d Christ again without the help of Muy. Again., Joseph becomes manipulated into a

position in which he is identified with humanity in general, and therefore with the

audience.

Joseph's finai farewell to the audience allows him to close the story of the Holy

Family, and also to hand over the rest of the Cycle to Christ: "No lenger will we

bide,/fares wele ali folke in feere" (York 2W287-288). From here on, the cycle wiil focus

on Jesus' own actions, and the audience, prepared by the story of the Holy Family, must

use what it has thus far assimiiated to expenence the central story of the cycle.

Joseph's journey as the first Christian takes on a Merent fonn in "The

Purification." This play, as it now exists in the York Register, is a very late version,

entered afier 1567, although a version of the play is recorded as having existed as eariy as

141 5.266 Since this play is so much later than that, we must keep in mind that the

charactensation of Joseph in the episode may have changed significantfy over the

intervenins century and a half. But the most significant change that certainly took place

over that period was the Reformation, and the resulting implications regarding the

importance, forms, and meaning of the ritual of the purification of women must be taken

into account.

The poiitics of such a play in 1567 are ambiguous. The ritual for purification or

churching outlined in the Book of Common Prayer has not changed much since its

'66 Recordr ojEar& English Drma: York, ed. Johnston and Rogerson 19,3 5 1, 705.

inception, but during the sixteenth century the emphasis on purification was lessened,

while that of thanksgiving was increased. For example, the prayer book of 1 549 entitles

the ritual "The Order of the Purification of Weomenw while the revised book o f 1552

changes the title to "The Thankes Geuing o f Women after Childe Birth, Commonly Called

the Churchyng of W~rnen."'~' In addition, the more radical Protestants of the time

objected to any emp hasis on purification at al1 (and ofien to any churching ritual of any

kind) as being not oniy too Catholic but too Jewish, calling it among other things "a mixed

action of Judaisrn and popery."" Their argument was not populaq moa women seem to

have used the Comrnon Prayer ritual without any negative feelings about its Judaic

~ r i g i n s . ' ~ ~ In fact, Keith Thomas argues that "for people at large churching was

indubitably [...] closely linked to its Jewish predecessor," and that that Luik with the sacred

past was considered positive-though not aii scholars share Thomas's Mew."

Thus, the habitua1 entitling of the play as "the Punficacion of our lady,"n' Mary

and Joseph's debate over the need for and meaning of the ritual, and Joseph's rhetorical

and exegeticai iinking of the Jewish laws to Christian fulfillment can perhaps be seen as a

'" The Firsr and Secomi Prqer Books of Uivard L7,ed. E.C. S. Gibson. Everyman's Library 448. 1910 (London: Dent, 1960) 278,428.

David Cressy, Birzh, Màrriage. and Deaih: RiîuaI, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Sf uart England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1 997) 208.

L69 Cressy, Bir th, M m a g e , and Deah 2 1 O .

"O Keith ïhomas, Religion ami Ihe Dechte of Magic: Sttddies in Populur Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Sevenfeenth-Cert~t~y England, 1 97 1 (London : Penguin, 1 99 1 ) 43 ; see Cressy 208ff.

"' Records of Eariy Engiish Dr-: York, eds. lohnston and Rogerson 35 1.

164

late example of the York plays' assertion and reinforcement of a lasting commu~ty . For

al1 the religious changes that had taken place in the preceding decades, the riniai of

churching remained central to wmmunity Me; it was the moment in which a woman,

recently separated from the cornrnunity by her childbearhg, was brought back in. It was

also a moment of reinforcement of ecclesiastical authority over the life of the community,

and, nom a certain point of view, of the iink between Christian Life and its ancient past.'+l

Joseph's role in the portrayal of this moment difFers somewhat fiom his role in

earIier York plays. For example, "The Purification" is unusuai in that it does not

necessarily, to a modem reader, ponray Joseph as an old man. He is wise in the law, to be

sure, as his ability to recite significant details of it f?om memory indicates, but he does not

ever cornplain about his physical condition or refer to his age (such cornplaints in this play

are reserved for Simeon). Furthemore, he refers to Mary as "spowse" (York 171200)

rather than "doghter," his more usual appellation for her. in fact, Joseph usually did not

become portrayed as a young man in art until the seventeenth ~ e n t u r y , ' ~ and the inclusion

of this character in the York Cycle, amidn five other, traditional Josephs, renders the

possibility that this Joseph is a young man practicaily null. The dflerence seems to be

from a different understanding of Joseph's age: not feeble, he is yet seen to be venerable.

The firn words spoken of Joseph are Mary's address to him, "Joseph my husbonde

and my feer" (York 1 7/ 1 87). The description of him as "feer" or cornpanion is in some

contrast to Mary's address of him in the eariier plays of the cycle; indeed, her customary

" Cressy, Birth, Marriage. and Death 228-229.

" Warner, Aione of Ail Her Sex 188-190.

165

appelation, "Su," is not to be found in "The Rirification" at all. The difference not only

signifies a somewhat more assertive characterization of Mary, but also a Werent

relationship between her and Joseph; not her guardian but her cornpanion and advisor, he

represents a bridge between the old law and the new, between the characten on the stage,

and between the audience and the scene.

Joseph is seen, first, to be an expert in the law of the temple. Indeed, he is far

more expen in these matters than his spouse (rather a different situation Erom, say, that in

the N-Town plays). When Mary first mentions that she wishes for purification, Joseph

replies that, fiom a legal point of view, such action is needless.

This matter that thowe moves to me

1s for all these women bedene

That has conceyved with syn fieshly

To bere a chylde.

But Mary, byrde, thowe neyd not soo

For this cause to bee pusij.ed, loo,

In Goddes temple.

For certys thowe art a clene vyrgyn (York 17/20 1-204,209-2 12).

Joseph recognizes the Iegal principle of purification and afErms it, but asserts that the facts

of this case are not covered by the law.

If a woman having receivedseed shall bear a man child, she s h d be

unclean seven days. [...] And when the days of her purification are expired

166

[...] and she is not able to offer a larnb, she shall take two tudes, or two

young pigeons (Lev. 1 2:2,6,8; my emphasis)?"

Joseph clearly knows the rite weil, includiig the seemingly gratuitous detail that the law is

only for a woman who has received seed.

His understanding of the Iaw is not merely detailed, however. He connects the

detail of the uniqueness of Mary's conception of Christ to her moral as well as physical

purity: "For certys thowe arte a clene vyrQyn/For any thoght thy harte withinw (York

1 712 13-2 14). Such emphasis on thought, the heart, and intention echoes Christ's Sermon

on the Mount, in which such lessons as

You have heard that it was said to thern of old: Thou shah not commit

adultery. But 1 say to you, that whosoever shaii look on a woman to lust

&er her, hath already cornmitted adultery with her in his heart (Matt. 5 :

27-28).='

are assened as nilfillments of the old law in the new law. Thus, Joseph's expertise in the

hlosaic law is not one of pedantic detail only; rather, it is portrayed as an understanding

that bridges the gap, for medieval Christians, between the Old Testament and the New.

Of course, his assertion that purification is needless for Mary does not prevail.

The Virgin argues that she wishes to ofFer "a sample of mekeness" (York 1 7/22 1 ), and

"' Mulier, si suscepto semitie pepent masculum, immunda ent septem diebus. [. ..] Cumque expleti fùennt dies purificationis suae [...] nec potuerit offerre agnum, sumet duos turtures vel duos pullos columbarum

"'~udiais quia dictum est antiquis: Non moechaberis. Ego autem dico vobis, quia ornnis qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendum eam, jarn moedtatus est earn in corde suo.

167

Joseph quickly and wiilingiy agrees. M e r a briefdimssion over the technicalities of the

sacrifice, in which Joseph's knowledge of the fine points of the law is further conveyed

(York 17/232-253), Joseph leaps into a quite astonishing explanation of the law through

typology and Christian theology :

And yf we haue not both in feer,

The lame, the burd, as ryche men haue,

Thynke that vs must present here

Oure babb Jesus, as we voutsaue

Before Godes sight.

He is our lamb Mary, kare the not ( 1 7/254-259).

The explanation of Jesus as the lamb and the sacrifice places Joseph fùlly in the middle of

the oId and new dispensations; hîs bridging of the two allows the audience to interpret

both the play and their familiar purification rites as a link between the Judaic and the

Christian, and b e e e n the p a s and present of the comunity.

Joseph is not, however, portrayed as consciously understanding the fûll

implications of Christianity; nor indeed is Mary. FoUowing the Luke account, they cannot

be;'" but the inclusion of such a fact at the end of a play in which Joseph has played such

a crucial henneneutic fûnction is telling. For, Joseph once again falls short of fidl

understanding, and seems, as in his eartier portrayals, to occupy a space between

adherence to law and understanding of the spirit: a space that must be filied by trust and

276 "Et erat pater eius et mater mirantes super his quae dicebannir de iiiolhd his father and mother were wondering at those things which were spoken concerning hm" (Luke 2:33).

wonder.

JOSEPH: Mary, my spowse and madyn mylde,

In hart 1 marveli here greatly

Howe these folke spekes of our chylde.

They say and teils of great maistry

That he shall doo.

MARIA: Yea certes, Joseph, 1 marveli also,

But 1 shail bere it fiil1 styll in mynde.

JOSEPH: God geve hyme grace here weil to do,

For he is comme of gentyll kynde (York 17/428-436).

Joseph's wonder at the words of the prophets show, for the first tirne in this play, a

hermeneutic impasse that the character cannot bridge. His response convasts with the

audience, who, knowing the aory of Chtin, knows well what the prophets mean- In bis

final lines, Joseph once again makes a statement that is more sipificant than it seerns on

the surface; though it seems Literally to refer to Jesus' Davidic ancestry, it rather O ~ M O U S ~ ~

also refers to his divine nature. Joseph demonstrates once again the tendency to say more

than he thinks he is saying; the dramatic irony typical to the character, also typically,

demonstrates a posture of acceptance in the face of mystery, inviting the audience to do

the sarne. He also invites, by this irony, the audience to do with his words what he cannot

do with those of the prophets: interpret them. Nonetheless, his actions suggest that

whether the interpretation of signs and words is effective or not, acceptance and faith are

still the proper attitudes and must prevail.

169

From what we have seen, it is clear th no one absdutely coherent pictue of the

character of Joseph is drawn. Neverthetess, the audience (and the modem reader) cannot

help noticing cenain cornmodties throughout. Joseph is often a centre ofpathos, he is

porîrayed as venerable, an expert in the law, a bridge to the new dispensation who does

not always understand the implications of his own statements or actions. He is concemed

with domestic and juridical maners, and nequentiy demonstrates the limitations of them

both. He oflen becomes manipulated into direct identification with the audience, though

the dramatic irony inherent in his character often creates tension of the opposite kind.

Above ali, he is a character who demands engagement and interpretation, and who both

bridges the gap between the audience and its sacred past and allows the audience room to

refiect upon its reIation to that pas .

Chapter 5

The Conversion of Saint Paul and the Rhetoric of Sainthood

Unsurprisingiy, Paul of Tarsus, the first major Christian rhetorician, has lurked

behind many of the texts discussed in this thesis. It is he, after dl, who provided

Christianity with the gentile emphasis that allowed it to become the religion of medieval

Europe in the first place. It is also his writing in the New Testament that provides the

locus of Augustine's analysis in the first Christian rhetorical guidebook, De docmka

Chrisrima- Because of his writing, indeed, the character of Paul would have been more

clearly known to medieval playwrights than that of any other New Testament figure,

including, arguably, Jesus himselE But his personality, and the central moment of his life,

are captured most vividly in the story of his conversion in Acts 9, the very story that the

writer of the Digby Comersiott of Sairlt Paul and his revisers chose to tell. In their

translation of that nory ont0 the nage,m the original playwright and his revisers created a

complex study in miniature of many of the issues of rhetoric, piety, and community that

have underlaid ail the texts discussed so far.

An area that has been explored by Mary del Vilar, "The Staging of 7he C u n v e r ~ of Suint Paul,'' Theatre Notebook 25 ( 1 970- 1 97 1 ): 64-68; Glynne Wickham, "The Staging of Saint Plays in England," 2 7 ~ Medievui Dramu, ed. Sandro Sticca (Albany: State U of New York P, 1972) 99-1 19, Darryll Grantley, "Saints' Plays," Cambridge Compcnlion 265-289. and Raymond J- PenzeU. "The Medieval Theatre in the Streets," meufre Suwey 14 ( 1 973): 1 -2 1. On the question of whether or not the audience moved in procession with the play, my own opinion is that they did, and 1 shail treat the play accordingiy. This opi@on is based upon my experience as producer of just such a production, done by Poculi Ludique Societas in 1994. See also John Marshall, "Modem Productions of Medievai English Rays," Cambridge Compcnion 305-306.

The understanding of language, and of audience, underlying The Conversion of

Suznt Pmd is cornplex. From the beginning, the h o n Poeta draws a sharp distinction

between the apodeictic proof of scripture and the nonapodnchc proof of the play's

spectacle; he also assens the need for the audience to engage critically with what it sees in

order to make and overcome that distinction:

HonorabIe fiendys, besechyng yow of lycens

To procede owur processe, we may [shew] vnder your correccyon,

The conuersyon of Seynt Paule, as pe Byble gyf experyens.

Whoo lyst to rede be booke Actum Appos~o~omm,

Ther s h d he haue be very notycyon;

But, as we Gan, we s h d vs redres,

Brefly, wyth yowur fauour, begynyng owur proces (7-1 3).

Poeta makes reference to this distinction throughout the play, dedaring for instance that

"To vndernande bis matter, wo lyst to rede /The Holy Bybyil for Be better spede,/ Ther

s h d he haue Be p e w intellygens" (1 58-1 60). Even when Poeta is bold enough to

suggest that the play itself has persuasive or didactic power, he then corrects himself:

Thus Saule ys conuertyd, as ye se expres,

As Holy Scrypture tellyth whoso lya to loke perfore.

Thus we comyte yow ail to pe Trynyte,

Conkludyng thys stacyon as we can or may,

Vnder pe correccyon of h e m bat letteryd be;

Howbeyt vnable, as 1 dare speke or say,

The compyler hereof shuld translat veray

So holy a story, but wyth fauorable correccyon

Of my honorable masters, of ber benygne supplexion (346, 352-359).

The insistence upon the correction of the Iearned, despite the rnixed nature of the

audience- "thys wurshypfbil congragacyon,/ That here be present of hye and low degre"

(3 6 1 -3 62)-suggests that the plafight or "compyler" of n e Conversion of Saint Poul

did not anticipate o d y one kind of response fiom the audience; nor, therefore, could he

have anticipated that any of his rhetoricai means would have a unified effect. While the

playwright anticipates protest Erom those who are learneci, he does not seem to fiorn those

who are not, suggesting that the playwright rnay have been anticipating a mixeci response,

perhaps even protest.

Such anticipation might have been reamnable at the tirne. The original version of

The Cowersion of Sairzf Pml-that is, the version that existed before the later additions in

the rnanuscript-seems t o have been written at some time in the early 25001s, based upon

the watermarks and handwriting; the later additions, including the episode of Belial and

Mercury and the various stage directions saying "Daunce," seem to have been made mid-

century."' These dates would place the original performing lifetime of the play squarely

Baker, Murphy, and Hali, Lote Medieval PPIqys xviii. See also Donald C. Baker, "When 1s a Text a Play? Reflections Upon What Certain Late Medieval Dramaîic Texts Can Tel1 Us," in Briscoe and Coldewey, eds., Contexts for Eariy English Drama 20-25.

173

during the d d a leading to and following the Act of Supremacy in 1 534 that began the

English Refomation. hiring this period, the aruggle between the proponents of

traditionai religion and the proponents of radicalism was not merely political but

philosophical; it was a nruggie between "a religion of ceremonid practise [. . .and] a

religion of the word."* It is also mie that The Conversion of Saint P m i shows, 4th

itself, aspects of both religions; indeed, the entire play shows an uneasy tension between

the two.

It would be tempting at this point to draw too large a conclusion, and to declare

that The Conversion of Saint Paul may be a reforrnist or even a Protestant play.

However, the most that can be said with any definiteness is that, under certain hypothetical

performative conditions, the play might not have been offensive to some varieties of

reformer who may have seen it. ~ea ther W-Vaquez, for one, argues that the play "mus

have been originaiiy composed and produced to suit Catholic sensibilities" but ' ' a h could

be performed to suit an alternative the~logy.""~ Certainly the play contains none of the

explicit anti-Papal rhetoric oc for instance, Bde's King John. Even Poeta's insistence on

the authority of the Bible cannot be seen as Protestant; as the play's editors note, his

recomrnendation of “Atm Appoloonm" seems to be a translation fiom the Catholic

senrice for matins on the feast of Saint Paul: "But if you desire to see how it was with

279 Jeanette Dillon, Language ami Stage in Medieval ami Renaissance E n g i d (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998) 76.

'" Hill-Vaquez, "Possibilities of Performance" 3 .

1 74

these things, read the Acts of the Apodes, so that you may understand pr~fitably-"~'

What can be said is that the play is aware of and uneasy about its own project of

persuading an audience to holy living. It is aware that its audience is a mixed group, that

both verbal and visual rhetoricai devices are usefùi but dangerous, and that it nonetheless

is needfùi to attempt to bring the audience together, to persuade them with aü available

means to community and faith.

Paul is a singularly appropriate subject for such a play. Paul's epistles, of course,

were in general addressed to mixed audiences for the very purpose of persuading hem to

holy living as cornmunities. They also show, not incidentdy, that he was a master of

rhe tor i~; '~ nor was this fact 10s on Augustine, who calls Paul "our o r a t ~ r . " ~ ~ Those

writings aiso show, however, that Paul saw the usefùlness of rhetoric but did not tmst it

for its own sake. This point of view is made most clear in his writings to the Corinthians:

' ' M y speech and my preaching was not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in

shewing of the Spirit and power" (1 Cor. 2: l,4);= and "Except you utter by the tongue

"Quod si rebus ipsis id ita fien videre disideras, lege. Actuum Apostolorum librum, perspicies profecto." Quoted in Late Medievol Religms Plays, 195 d l - 1 2 . M y translation.

ZP- See Kennedy, Chs ica l Rhetoric and Its Christian urui Secuim Tradition 1 3 0, for a summary of rhetorical xholarship on Paul's epistles themselves.

"3 "eloquentem nostnim."Augustine, De doctri~ta Chrisliana iv-vü. 1 5 -47; 2 1 4- 215.

"et sermo meus, et praedicatio mea non in persuabilibus humanae sapientiae verbis, sed in ostensione spiritus et virtutis."

175

plain speech, how shall it be known what is said?" (1 Cor. 14:9)? Paul also stressed the

imponance of the presence of divine grace in the act of preaching, thus removùig the

emphasis 6om human skiil and placing it upon the sheer power of God's messageW and

his knowledge of it: "For although I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge" (2 Cor.

1 1 :6)?'

Not only Paul's own writings but also the cornrnentary of those who came afler

him stressed these same factors- For example, Augustine asks, "What is the use of comect

speech if it does not meet with the liaener's ~nderstanding?"~' and Aquinas notes,

''When a man so speaks as to move his hearers [.. .] the Holy Spirit uses the tongue of a

man as a sort of instrument; and it is the same spirit which completes the work

in~ardly.""~ In these comrnents, and in this attitude, one might sense a rejection of

rhetoric aitogether, in the Digby play, which is necessady performative and therefore

rhetoricd, this attitude translates into the same kind of uneasiness with rhetoric that we

28s "Ita et vos per Iinguam nisi manifestum sermonem dedentis: quomodo scietur id quod dicitur?"

26 Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages 282.

'87 "Nam etsi imperitus sermone, sed non scientia. in omnibus autem manifestati SUMUS vobi~.~'

"' "Quid enim prodest locutionis integritas quam non sequitur intellectus audientis?" Augustine, De docttina Chrisriana iv.x. 24.66, 224-225.

'" ''Quod fit dum aliquis sic loquitur quod auditorern flectat [...] Spiritus Sanctus utitur lingua hominis quasi quodam instrumenta: ipse autem est qui perficit operationem interius. " Thomas Aquinas, Summa theofogica 2a 2ae, 1 77,1, vol. 45, Prophecy und Oiher Chmims 130-1 3 1 . Note, however, Aquinas' s emphasis on the role of the audience in completing the orator's speech.

have already noted in the Thomas plays, including an acute awareness of both the value

and the lirnits of rhetorical logos in the face of mystery.

Paul's own character, the dfamatist's primary vehicle for the conveyance of such

an attitude, is of course well attested fiom the New Testament sources: better attested, in

some ways, than the character of any of the other figures that we have considered.

Snibbom, irascible, passionate, eloquent, Paul's character in the Acts of the Apostles and

in his epistles remains in many ways the sarne in the Digby play, before and after his

conversion. Furthemore, the L e g e h ourea's account of Paul's conversion lays out

aspects of his character with which the Digby playwright seems to have been familiar?"

Paul had three vices, the first being wanton boldness, which he

demonstrateci by going to the high priests: "He was not summoned," says

the Gloss, "but went on an impulse, dnven by his zeal." His second vice

was insolent pride, because he is said to have breathed out threats of

violence against the disciples of the Lord. The third was that he

understood the Law accordiig to the flesh?'

The importance of efhos in this play cannot be denied; the playwright7s use of Paul rather

than another figure, and Poeta's constant reference to the ~ucforitas of the Bible and of

those audience members not "kckyng lyttural scyens" (657)- show that the persuasive

290 Baker, Murphy, and Hall, Lare Medieval Religious PIizys xxiv.

W l "Paulus enim tria uitia in se habebat. P h u m erat audacia, quod notatur in hoc quod dicitur: 'Accessit ad principem sacerdotum etc.' Glossa: 'Non uocatus, sed sponte zelo concitante eum.' Secundum erat superbia quod notanir in hoc quod dicitur 'Spirans minarum etc.' Tertium erat carnalis intellegia quarn scilicet in lege habebat." Jacobus, L egen& A urea vol. 1, 1 99; Golden Legetd vol. 1, 1 20.

177

power of authority and erhos is among the foremost of the play's concems: both proper

and improper authority, as in the Digby Mmy Magrtalene, but also the propnety of the use

of ethos at aii in persuading an audience to virtue.

Finaily, the play lacks nothing in @os, nor does it fail to use pathos to Peat

effect. Like Joseph in the York Cycle, Paul in the Digby play is positioned in multiple

roles: tyran& victim, penitent, preacher, prisoner, member of a Company. The audience,

which is made to be more directly involved in this than in perhaps any other Middle

English play, mua both physicdiy and rhetorically reconfigure itxifconstantly in order to

engage with the xenes played before i?. In the process of dohg so, the audience itself

becomes a cmcial part of the play, and the play becomes a part of the audience's own

wor1d.

in draw-ing upon these tbree modes of persuasion, the Digby playwrïght creates a

play that flllnls in miniature the hnctions of Middle English biblical drarna: it teaches,

moves, and persuades an audience to follow the expenence of Paul sympathetically, and

encourages them to use the expenence of that foliowing to reconsider their own lives.

While in the past three chapters we have focused on one means of persuasion at a tirne,

here let us consider aü three, so that we might begin to build up a more complete picture

of how the rhetoricai fùnction of saintiy character works in Middle English biblical drarna.

The limits of rhetoricd proof are both explored and clarified in Saznt Pml, in the

relationship between visual and verbal signification. The original play (or at least the

oldest extant version), without the devils or the dances, moves Giom the former to the

latter as its plot develops, even to the point of describing rather than staging the escape of

178

Paul via basket over the city waKm In its movement, the play explores the relationship

between proofs as visual icons of authority and proofs as verbal structures of reason.

In Sad's initiai appearance, both the visual and the verbal corne forth as

indications of his power; the latter kind, however, are ancillary to the former. Of course,

the audience wiJl see Sad ''good/r besene in k t wyse, lyke an aunterous knyth" (s-d.

13) before he begins to speak, yet what he then says reinforces the visual: "Most dowtyd

man 1 am lyuyng vpon the ground,/Gdly besene, wyth many a ryche garlement!" (14-1 5,

my emphasis). Nor is this incident isolated; even when Sad receives his horse to go on his

way, its prirnary benefit is visual. It too is "goodly besene" (1 ZS), and, the soldier assures

Saul, "wyll spede your mater" (130), which could mean either that the horse wiii hasten

his journey by its speed, or that it wiii bolster his authority, hence his arguments, by its

splendor- These references, a fonn of what David Miiis bas called the "behold and see"

c~nvent ior i ,~~ are so closely worded to each other that they mua be considered part of a

unified atternpt to make a point about visuai significations of power. That point seems to

be that a Society that depends upon the visual at the expense of the verbal is locating its

authority in an unstable place. For example, one of the most striking moments of the play

cornes when Saul receives his letters of authority fiom Caiaphas and Annas:

ANNA. And by thes letturs bat be most reuerrent,

Take them in hand, fbll agre beno,

My thanks to Kimberley M. Yates for pointing this out to me.

93 David Mils, "'Look at Me When I'm Speaking to You': The 'Behold and See7 Convention in MedievaI Drama" Medieval Engiish meatre 7 (1985): 4-12.

Constreyne aii rebeilys by owur hote assent,

We gyf yow fùii power so to doo.

Her Saule resaytcyth ther ietters.

SAULUS. Thys precept here I take in hande,

To fiiiifjrli after yowur wyllys both (49-53, s-d. 5 7-58).

Amas tells Saul to take the letters and agree to hem; he does not tel S a d to read the

letters, nor is there any indication that Sad does so. The letters exist as a visual icon of

Saul's deputized auîhority, both to the audience and to Saul's feUow characters; they are

as much a part of Saul's costume as any other ornament.

The importance of the visual is more striking when one compares the openhg of

this play with that of the twelflh-century Fleury A d repraesentandunz conve~sionem Beati

Pmrli Apostoii, which provides a usefùl contrast to the later, unrelated English play in that

it shows an entirely different set of possibiiities in the same biblical story. In the eariier

liturgical play, Saul does not begin with any reference to his own appearance, but rather

begins with a show of his authority by cornmanclment:

1 cannot tell you

How monstrously hatefiil to me are

The Chrïstians, who by thek deceit

Mislead this entire nation.

Go therefore, do not delay,

And al1 such persons you can

Fhd, apprehend by force;

B M ~ hither under arrest thox whom you have bound (Fleury 1-8)?

Nor do the stage directions give any special indication of Saul's splendid appearance,

saying only, "let there k prepared another seat, d upon if a young man in the likenesr

of Sauf; and let him have m e d attersrtants"(s.d. 1) . " The letters of authority, too,

while iconographical in their fùnction, are not paid the attention that the letters in the

Digby play are paid:

Then let the high priest give him some brief seafed message, and let him sq:

1 deliver to you my epistles

To Damascus against the Christians.

Do not permit the Christians

Whom you will find to escape (Fleury s.d. 17-2 1).=

Translations of this play are 6rom Bevington, Medievai D r a a 164-1 77. "Proplare uobis non ualeo/quam ingenti rnichi sint odio/Christicole, qui per fdlaciam/totam istarn seducunt patriam-fite ergo, ne tardaueritisJet quoscunque tales poteritidmuenire, ui comprehendite;/comprehensos uinctos adducite." Karl Young, Drama of the Medieval Chrch vol. 2, 2 19.

"Paretur et alia sedes, et super eam iuuetlis pidam in similitudine k l i : habeatque secum Ministres mazos." Young, Drama of the Medieval Church vol. 2, 219.

''Tunc Princeps Socerdotum det ei aiiquid breue sigillaturn, et d i a : Trado uobis meas epistoldin Damascum contra Christicolas,/euadere ne dimiseritis/Christicol~ quos inueneritis." Young, D r m a ofthe Medieval Church vol. 2, 220.

181

Immediately thereafter, the conversion takes place; no fùrther development of the visual

aspects of Saul's authority occurs. The Fleury play is, of course, far shoner than the

Digby play, with a total of eighty lines rather than 662; nonetheless, it is certain that the

Fleury play does not even take what tirne it gives to the pre-convenion Saul to explore the

issues that the Digby play does; its attention is elsewhere-

The Digby play explores not oniy Saul's dependence upon the visual but also the

kony of such dependence; that irony is rendered plain in the comic scene between the

stableboy and Saul's servant. While the dynarnics of this scene seem to have much in

cornrnon with those of the Belial and Mercury scene (indeed, the characters could easily

be doubled with each other), the stableboy and Saul's servant do not seem to represent

later additions, but to constitute part of the original Digby play."" Much of the comedy of

this scene depends upon the stableboy's daim of authority and nobility, based upon a

visual icon that came fiom his master:

STABULARYUS. 1 am non hosteler, nor non hosterlers kynne,

But a jentyimanys seruuant, I! [...]

[SERUUS]. A seniand ye are, and bat a good!

Ther ys no better lokyth owt of a hood!

STABULARYUS. Forsoth, and a hood 1 vse for to were,

Full well yt ys lynyd wyth sylk and chamlett;

Baker, Murphy, and Hall, Lote Medieval Religias P i q s xxv.

Yt kepyth me &O the cold, bat wynd doth me not dere,

Nowther fiost nor snow bat 1 therby do sett (89-90, 1 11-1 16).

The stableboy's claims would have seemed ridiculous to a contemporary audience. His

siik and camlet hood is far too expensive to have been anything other than a hand-me-

down kom his master (possibly S a d himself); his statement that it keeps him warm is

directly opposed to the kind of thinking about such hand-medowns that appeared in

penitentials, arnong other places. Chaucer's Parson's Taie, for example, asserts, "if so be

that they [the rich] wolde yeven [...] clothyng to the powe folk, it is nat convenient to

were for hire estaat, ne suffisant to beete hire necessitee, to kepe hem fio the

distemperance of the finnament."m The stableboy's visual signifier of rad , so obviously

second-hand and worthless as it is, provides an ironic comrnentary to Saul's visual

signifiers, which are aiso borrowed and worthless.

The real source of power in the play lies not in visual signals but in the word. As

Saul is blown off of his horse, and "GorBtedspekyth in heuynn (s-d. 183), Sad is relieved

of his sight, and must rely on words alone: "What woldyst 1 ded? Tell me here!" (189).

Endeed, Saul's prirnary symbol of authority, his horse, is rendered as ironic as the

stableboy's hood by God's Iine, "Yt ys hard to pryke agayns be spore!" (184). While this

line is entirely scriptural (Acts 9:5), it is given an ironic twist in the Digby play by the

presence of the horse; by God's word Saul's apparent role as rider and commander is

overthrown, and he is made into the ridden and commanded. Furthemore, the irony of

Chaucer. Parson 's Tale X (I) 420.

183

the stableboy and his poor attempts to show visual authority corne back to haunt Sad in

this moment, as Servus's jeerhg words, "Ye were so begrynilyd and yt had been a sowe!"

(1 05) suddenly appIy to Sad, face-down in the dut before the audience.

The importance of words in the second half of the play grows more crucial as

visual spectacle gives over to verbal virtuosity. The play's movement away fiom the

visual becornes most striking at its concIusion, in which the escape of Sad fiom prison is

merely described and not staged, a choice that was by no means a pracîid necessity. Ln

fact, it is described in a language that ody the learned in the audience would M y

comprehend :

POETA. Thus leve we Saule wythin be cyte,

The gatys kep by commandment of Caypha and Anna;

But the dyscypiys in be ny3t ouer pe waü truly,

As the Bybuil sayeth : 'dirn[i]semnt eum suntmitten [te js in sporta '.

(649-6 5 2 )

That the play merely found itseif unable to stage this scene is possible but not Likely. The

Digby playwright had no problem imagining spectacular effects of other kinds.

Furthermore, the play exists in the sarne manuscript as the far more spectacular Mary

MaghIetie (which calls for elevatïng devices of at least equal complexity), and, if John

Coldewey is c o r r e ~ t , ~ then it is possible that both plays were aaged at the same time at

Ieast once. Furthemore, that it is not impossible to stage Paul's escape via basket, even

299 John Coldewey, "The Digby Plays and the Chelmsford Records," Reseorch Opportunities in Renaisance Drmu 1 8 ( 1 975) : 1 O3 - 1 2 1 .

1 84

for medievai technology, is shown clearly by the Ficury play's staging of that event:

?hep1 /et the atte~dznts go and search for Saul. When this is discovered.

let Saul wirh his disciples be let down to the ground in a hranperfiom

some high place, a s iffiom u waIf (Fleuty s.d. 73)-

It is true that Paul's escape would be easier to stage indoors than outdoarfl', but the use

of elevating devices in other medieval plays fiom the York "Last Judgement" to the N-

Town "Assumption of the Virgin" suggests that such technology was both known and

used in both kinds of setting. It would appear that the ending of the Digby play, then, is

not a result of incapabiiity, but of a deliberate theatrical choice to end with words, to turn

the audience over to the Bible rather than to those "That of retoryk haue non inteiiygens"

(660), and to permît the audience itselfto complete the story in their own minds.

The play's use of and dependence on language, then, show both a reliance upon

the word and an uneasiness with visual display, despite the play's spectacle. The writer of

this play seems to wish to rely uithately on the Bible alone for apodeictic proof, yet also

uses the techniques of rhetoric to move the audience to such an attitude as well.

If the play's use of and attitude towards evidence show a tension between two

such extremes, so does the depiction of Sad's character itself. The ethos of any bibi id

character, as we have said elsewhere, does of course exist prior to any dramatic speech

made by that character; but the case of the Digby Saul is striking nonetheless, for this is a

3m Tunc Mittirni eant et quae-n>t Sindum. Quo cornperto, Soulus cton Disciplis suis in sporra ab afiquo alto h o , quasi a muro. ad terram demittatur. Young, Drama of the Medieval Church vol. 2, 222.

'O' My thanks to Clifford Davidson for pointing this out to me.

play about conversion; apparently a profound psychological change should take place in

the character. Indeed, the conversion of Paul was ofien seen in psychological terms even

in late medieval England. In many Western biblical illustrations of the scene, for example,

the moment of Paul's conversion is depicted in "a personal, psychological sense, by

showing Paul in a trame, fidien to the ground and helpless," rather than depicting the

moment in the more placid and ab- Byzantine fashion. The play, of course, depicts

Paul's conversion in similar terms, foliowing the Western pattern in every way: Paul is

equestrian rather than pedestrian, the figure of God appears rather than merely the hand of

God, and Paul is accompanied by two companions? But oihat the play does with Sad's

character during and following the moment of conversion is surpris'ing.

Previous to his conversion, the Digby Saul is established in a manner simiiar to that

of nurnerous tyrants in medieval drama: W<e Herod and Pharaoh in any of the cycle plays,

or Caesar in the Digby Maiy Magablene, Saul introduces himself with a boasting

monologue:

Most dowtyd man 1 am lyuyng vpon the ground,

Goodly besene, wyth many a riche garlement!

My pere on lyue 1 trow ys nott found!

Thorow pe world, fio pe oryent to pe occydent,

My fame ys best knowyn vndyr Be fjnmarnent!

lor Luba Eleen, "The iilumination of the Pauline Epistles in French and English Bibles of the Twelflh and Thirteenth Centuries," vol. I (Diss., U of Toronto, 1972) 193- 196. Eleen catalogues these and several other Westem conventions of pomaying Paul's journey.

I am rnost dred of p e p d vnyuersall-

They dare not dysp[l]ease me most noble!

Saule ys rny name-1 wyil bat ye notyfL--

Whych conspyreth the dyscyplys wyth thretys and menacys (14-21).

Saul' s alliances with the forces of enl are made plain not only by the content of thîs

speech, but also by its style, which is similar to that of many tyrants' speeches in Middle

English drama. His association with nich tyrants continues throughout the fist haIf of the

play, up to the moment of his conversion. Furthemore, the implications of Saul's

character are made clear in Ananias's protest to God. In Acts 9, Ananias says,

Lord, 1 have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy

saints in Jerusalem. And here he hath authority fiom the chief priests to

bind al1 that invoke thy name (Acts 9: 13- 14)?

The play deviates Corn this simple protest in two ways. First, it focuses more sharply on

Ananias's own state of mind; second, it focuses on Saul's personal reputation, not merely

on his actions but on his character:

ANANIAS. Lord, I am aferd, for aluay in my mynd

1 here so myche of hys hryous cruelte,

Pat for spekyng of Pi narne to deth he will put me.

Gretly 1 fere hys cruel tyranny (224-226, 246).

"Domine, audivi a multis de viro hoc, quanta mala fecerit sanctis tuis in lerusalem: et hic habet potestatem a pnncipibus sacerdotum alligandi o r n e s qui invocant nomen tuum."

Both the character and an appropriate reaction to the character are thus laid before the

audience. Ananias's reaction, to be sure, is s h o w after Saul's blinding, but his reaction is

not shown to be unreasonable- Yet God, in speaking to Ananias, suggests that not only

have Saul's loyalties been changed, but also Saul hirnself

God's words about Saul are not many, but they are suggestive of a significant

change in Saul's ethos: "a meke Iambe bat a wolf before was namyd" (2 18). Here and

elsewhere, the Digby playwright is closely following the words of Augustine as qucted in

the Legenrla uurea: "The Lamb that was slain by wolves tums a wolf into a lamb."m

God, accordingly, implies strongly that the change is due solely to his intervention: ''Wyth

my stroke of pyte sore ys he paynyde,/Wanting his sygth, for he ys t d y blynyde" (222-

223). Augustine, as quoted in the Legenh airrea, says: "Paul was prostrated in order to

be blinded, blinded in order to be changed, changed in order to be sent, and sent in order

that he Mght suffer for the t r ~ t h . " ~ ' Furihermore, both Jacobus and the Digby playwright

refer to the moment of conversion as a cure; Jacobus States that Christ healed Paul "of the

tumor of pride,"306 while the Digby playwright's God tells Saul, "1 wyll be recure!" (187).

Ai1 of this shows Saul in a moment of profound change in character, which wiil later be

symbolized visually to the audience by a change in costume 6om knightly garb to

'0.4 "Occisus agnus a lupis fecit agnos de lupis." Jacobus, Legettda Aurea vol. 1, 198; Golderr Legetzdvol. 1, 119.

305 "Prostratus est Paulus ut cecaretur, cecatus est ut mutaretur, mutatus est ut rnitteretur, rnissus est ut pro ueritate pateretur." Jacobus, Legenda Atrrea vol. 1, 200; Golden Legend vol. 1, 120.

"a tumore superbie." Jacobus, Legencki Aurea vol. 1, 1 99; Golden Legend vol. 1, 1 19. These seem to be Jacobus's own words, not Augustine's.

''djsgpiys wede" (s.d. 502).

The play does, however, show a number of odd features that catl into question the

exact role of ethos in its overail structure. First, aithough the play is cafled "The

conuersyon of Seynt Paule" (9), the character does not change his name fiom Saul to Paul

upon his conversion as popular expectation might have it. in fact, when he is arrested for

preaching Christianity, he insists, "Yes, sertaynly, Saule ys my proper name" (579), thus

forgoing a potentiaiiy powerfbl theatrical moment that might have occurred had he chosen

that moment to declare a new name for himself. Of course, the playwright is being stridy

biblical in insisting upon this point: the story of Saul's conversion is told in Acts 9, but the

change of name does not occur until Acts 13%' when the author of Acts quite suddenly

and somewhat inexplicablp7 refers to "Saul, otherwise Paul."- Second, the use of a

visual change to si- an ethical change-Saul's change of costume-despite the play's

overd movernent fiom the visual to the verbal may be a kind of reminder or at least

admission that what the audience is seeing is a representation oniy, and that the character

they are seeing is merely a character. The Digby playwright insists, in the reaim of ethus

also, that the Bible is to be the final authonty, not the play, oration, or representation

based upon it.

Thepathos of Saul's situation is perhaps the most striking aspect of the play,

307 It is possible that a new source for Acts begins at this point; "Sind was [the saint's] Jewish name, P d his Roman name." The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version, ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Odord UP, 1977) l337n8. However, medieval people would certainly not have thought of source studies in the context of the Bible in the way that modem scholars do.

Mt "Saulus autem, qui et Paulus."

189

however; in it, both the logic of the narrative and the ethos of Saul hirnselfare vitalized,

and in it, the audience is able to move towards the understanding of Saul's conversion that

the other two branches of the play's rhetonc direct thern towards. Such a perspective on

the play's use ofparhos is not, perhaps, selfbident to a modem reader. The playwright

may seem at first to wish to distance the audience fiornpathos, in his use of the narrator

Poeta; such a device may be seen as a Brechtian alienation enait. ~owever , Victor 1.

Scherb has argued convincingly that "Poeta's speeches mediate between the audience and

the action; [...] the dramatist hence partially impels the audience to the proper devotional

and intellemai r e s p o ~ s e . " ~ if this is indeed the playwrïght's strategy (and th is thesis has

argued that such was typicaily the strategy of medieval playwrights), then Poeta cannot be

seen as an alienation eEect but rather as a rhetorical device emphasizingpathos, precisely

the opposite of what alienation effects accomplish.

The pathetic elements in The Conversion of Sairtt Paul, indeed, are many and

powerfùl, but they are encapsulated in the moment of Saul's fa fkom his horse. As Saul

lies upon the platea before the audience, he bursts forth in a moment of pure emotion:

O mercyfùll god, what aylyth me?

I am lame, my leggys be take me fio!

My sygth lykwyse, 1 may nott see!

1 c m non tell whether to goo!

My men hath forsake me also.

'09 Victor 1. Scherb, "Frame Structure in me Conversion of St. Pm/, " Comparative Drama 26 (1 992) 127.

Whether shaii 1 wynde, or whether s h d 1 pas?

Lord, 1 beseche the, helpe me of thy grace! (197-203)

As a description of what is happening to Sad e x t e d y , this speech is incorrect in several

particulars. It is not true that he is lamed; scripture specifies, "And Sad arose fiom the

ground" (Acts 9:8), "O and moments later he mus make his way to the Darnascus locus.

It is also not true that he cannot teil where to go, because God has just told hun where:

"Aryse, and goo b u wyth glad cher4 Into the cyte a 1ytyi.I besyde" (190-191). Fiaally, it

is not yet true that his men have forsaken hirn; they are in plain view of the audience, and

one of them immediately replies, "S~T, we be here to help in Pi nede" (204). By conttast,

the Fleury play remains scripturai by having Saul note only that he is blind: "Why have you

depnved me of my sight?" (Fieury 26).311 The Digby speech, then, has as its primary focus

not the conveyance of information but the stirnng of emotion; just as the specific details of

the Cmcifkion in the Mediraiiones vitae Chtisti are there to stir rather than teach the

reader,"' so also the specific (but here transparently ahistorical) details of Saul's plight

310 "Sumextit Saulus autem de terra."

"' "Cur me meo priuasti lumine?" Young, Druma of the Medevai Church vol. 2, 220.

See, for instance, Love, Minor 176- 177, in which the reader is told, "Now take hede diligently to i>e manner of c r u c ~ g , " and is then told in great detail how it was done, only to be informed, "Dis is one maner of his crucimng &er be opinione of sume men. Obere bere bene bat trowen bat he was not crucifiede in bis rnanere;" the reader is then shown an entirely diBerent method in equal detaii. The point, however, is not to teach history but to move the reader emotionally and spirituaily: "Bot wheber so it be in one maner or in obere sope it is bat oure lorde Jesus was nailede hard vpon pe crosse.*' Some versions of the Meditaiones add that the reader may choose one version or the other to contemplate "If t his suits you better." kgusa and Green, Meditations on the Lue of Chrisr 334.

191

exist to stir and involve the audience. The purpose here is movere, rather than docere.

The Conversion of Saint P d , in fact, is best known for the way in which it

involves its audience directly in its action. Most scholars, as previously noted, believe that

the audience is physically to move with the progress o f the play; Mary del Viar disagrees,

arguing that the text's mention of procession means instead, "follow and pay attention

with d l diligence to the general argument of the play.""' Yet there is no reason why

Poeta's words should not mean both. Indeed, it is possible to see, in the audience's

physical entanglement with the world o f the play, the same kind of phenornenon that we

have observed in the York Cycle: the audience by implication plays multiple and

developing roles in relation to the saint, in such a way as t o bring them syrnpathetically

into a fùller position of faith.

The audience has two characters to mediate between themselves and the play:

Poeta and Saul. Poeta appears first, casting the audience in an honorable light, rerninding

them that Jesus "for vs sufferd payne" (41, and calling them "thys wyrshypfùll

audyendHonorable eendys" (6-7). He implies also that the audience is t o react cr i t id ly

and actively to the play, begging their "lycens [. ..] vnder your correccyon [...] wyth yowur

fauouf' (7, 9, 13). M e r this polite praise, Saul's appearance may seem somewhat jarring.

His dedaration that he is "most drad of pepull vnyuersall" (19) seems to cast the audience

as his cowering subjects, in much the sarne way as does the Emperor's boast at the outset

of the Digby Mary Mag&ierre. This speech, however, comes after the praise of Poeta, in

which the audience is reminded to be critical. The audience at this point may seem to have

'13 del Villar, "ïhe Staging of The Conversion of Saint Paul' 66.

192

a choice: whether to imagine itseifas one of those subjects, projecting itseif into the scene,

or whether to hold back. It is possible, perhaps likely, that the audience would be split,

some members foiiowing one course and some another. At any rate, Saul's Grst direct

address to them, "Sad ys my name-1 wyll bat ye notyIil-Whych conspyretb the

dyscyplys wyth thretys and menacys" (21-22), both invites the audience to take note and,

by contrast of the second-person pronoun and the third-person reference to the disciples,

invites the audience to separate itseif in imagination fiom those disciples. Furthemore,

Saul's statement that "We wyll them nott sufFer to rest in no place" (26) Is a M e r

invitation to the audience to decide on its temporary sympathies: with us or with them.

Thus, fiom the outset, a series of choices is given by implication for the audience; how its

rnembers are to position themselves is largely up to them.

It is during Saul's joumey to Damascus that the most vivid of choices must be

made. Poeta reappears with more respecthl words to the audience, "Besechyng thys

audyens to folow and succede/Wyth ai i your delygens bis generall processyon" (1 56- 157);

however, Poeta aiso stresses the importance of the audience's involvement emotionaiiy,

not merely inteliectdy, when he advises, "Take ye good hede, and theno gyî affeccyon!"

(168). The term "affeccyon" here means a strong emotional involvement leading to

decision. The term was used by John Trevisa as a synonyrn for any emotion: ''A.fTecions

ben foure Joye Hope Drede and Sorowe;""' Chaucer's Panon describes fortinide as "an

"" Cited in the OED's entry under "affection," def 3. The MED's entry under "affeccioun" sirniiarly defines the word as the "faculty of the sou1 concerned with emotion and volition."

193

aEeccioun thurgh which a man despiseîh anoyouse thinges" . '" The audience's emotionai

involvement also is called upon by Sad, who now speaks of his own emotions regardii

his task and his intendeci victirns:

My purpose to darnask f d y 1 intende;

To pursue the dyscypulys, my lfle 1 apply !

For to breke down the chyrchys thus 1 condescende.

Non 1 wyll suffer that shall edyfey-

Perchaunce owur lawes they my=rte therby,

And the pepull a h , turne and conuerte,

Whych shuld be gret heuynes vnto myn hart (167-1 75).

The audience again has choices: the audience may choose to follow Saul both physicaiiy

and emotionally, or may hold back; they may engage their emotions at this point or not316

The unquestioned need for the audience to become fùlly engaged happens at the

moment when Saul does so, at the moment of his encounter with the divine. The

appearance of God is curious in this play; it is possible that one actor only played God in

both the appearances to Saul and to Ananias, and indeed the speech headings read "Deus"

in both scenes. It is true, however, that the stage directions refer to two different aspects

Chaucer, Parso~z's Tale X(1) 728.

316 Performance experience shows different possibilities in different audiences. During one of PLS's performances in 1994, to an audience of high xhool students in Hamilton NY, the audience crowded so thickly around Saul that he was scarcely able to make his own progress, leading the actor to snap, "Out of the way, peasants!" By contrast, a mostly adult audience in Toronto a week later kept its distance, prompting the actor to encourage them to foilow when they would not.

of God: during Sad's conversion, it is " G d e u d [that] spekyth in heuynn (s.d. 182)'

while a few minutes later it is "Cryst [who] qperyth to Armanie" (s-d. 210). The

difference seems unlilcely to have been a mere slip of the pen, given the precise and not

uncormnonly understood clifferences between the two aspects of God, as in Margery

Kempe's experience when she is forced to compare the two in a vision:

Pan be creatur kept sylens in her sowle & answeryd not berto, for sche was

fiil sor aferd of Be Godhed & sche cowde no skyll of dalyawns of be

Godhede, for al hir lofe & ai h i . afFeccyon was set in manhode of Crist

& berof cowde sche good skyiie & sche wolde for no-thyng a partyd

Derfr~.~ ' '

If this sarne distinction is preserved in the iconography of The Conversion of Saint Paul,

then the possible reactions to and understanding of the appearances to Sad and to Ananias

are more complex and variable than they may appear at first giance.

The appearance of God to Saul is, in the ori_Pinal version of the play at least, the

most strikingly spectacular of moments. Were comyrth a fenrertl. wyth gret tempest, arrd

Saule fmlyfh down of hys horse; k t done. G&d spekyth in heuyn" (s.d. l82), read the

stage directions. The spectacle, as we have seen, is not accompanied by strictly biblical

details: the laming of Saul, for example, is not mentioned in Acts. Furthemore, the words

of Deus in the Digby play are not exactly biblicd either. While they do contain the stnctly

"' Book of ~tfmgery Kempe 86.

195

Scriptural and rather odd phrase "Yt ys hard to pryke agayns the spore!" (184),31s they

nonetheless change perhaps the most crucial word in the same Scriptural verse. Instead of

saying, "1 am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts 919, 319 the Digby playwright's God

say s,

1 am pi Savyour bat ys so trwe,

Whych made heuyn and erth, and eche creature-

Offende nott my goodnes; 1 wylI Be recure! ( 1 85- 1 87)

Ln this version of G d ' s appearance to Saul, the majesty rather than the humanity of God

is stressed. Such emphasis is reinforceci in God's directions to Saul; instead of teilhg him

simply, "Arise and go into the city; and there it s h d be told thee what thou must do"

(Acts 9:7),320 the Digby playwright's God elaborates greatly, showing the extent to which

he is responsible for ali that wiil happen to Saul:

Aryse, and goo pou wyth glad chere

Into the cyte a lytyll besyde,

And 1 shall be socor in euery dere,

That no maner of yU xal betyde,

And 1 wyll ther for the prouyde

By my grete goodnes what bou shalt doo.

"' Compare Acts 95, "durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitradt is hard for the+ to kick against the goad."

319 "Ego sum Iesus, quem tu persequeris."

320 "Surge, et ingredere civitatem, et ibi dicetur tibi quid te oporteat facere."

Hy as fast thether as b u mast goo (190-196).

Of course, the Digby playwright must elaborate upon every aspect of the account in Acts

if he does not wish his play to end d e r a few minuta; but the precise choice of emphasis

in elaboration is quite particular in this scene. It is also rather difTerent tiom the emphasis

in G d ' s appearance to Ananias.

In the latter scene, the playwright has slightly different material to work fiom.,

because the account in Acts takes the form of a dialogue. The biblical Ananias protests to

God, impiying that going to Saul would endanger his own Me; God replies merely,

Go thy way: for this man is to me a vesse1 of election, to carry my name

before the gentiles and kings and the chiidren of Israel. For I will shew him

how great things he mua suffer for my narne's sake ( Acts 9 : 1 5 - 1 6). "' In the Digby play, this statement is expanded into a rather personal exchange between God

and Ananias, in which Ananias speaks of his fear of Saul and in which God urges his

disciple, "Do my behest ! Be nothyng ashamyd!" (2 19), and 'Way, Ananie, nay, 1 assure

be,/He wulbe glad of thy cummyng!" (227-228), and "Be nothyng a-cirad! He ys a chosen

wessell [...] A very pynacle of pe fayth, 1 ensure the," (234, 240), and "Be nothyng in

dowte for good nor yll./Farewell, Ananie! Tell Saule what 1 do say" (243-244). In this

exchange, the playwright's emphasis is entirely different fiom that in the exchange

between Sad and God. Whereas the earlier exchange emphasizes God's gandeur, even

to the point of not using the narne of Jesus, the later exchange emphasizes God's

"' "Vade, quoniam vas electionis est rnihi iste, ut portet nomen mewn coram gentibus, et regibus, et filiis Israel. Ego enim ostendam illi quanta oponeat eum pro nornine meo pati."

humaneness even when the ori-&aI text does not.

Of course, the difference between these two exchanges is the audience to whom

God addresses himself. Sad is yet "a wolf [. ..] truiy blynde" (2 18,223)' whiie Ananias is

a leader of the disciples; it is natural that a speaker would address himselfdflerentiy to a

difFerent audience. Yet the play's audience is witness to both exchanges, and the strategy

directed at them is cornplex. The audience watching the scene of Saul's conversion has T

two figures before them: a powerfiil representation of God, and a powerless and pathetic

representation of Saul, lying upon the ground and speaking of his helplessness. The sarne

audience watching God's conversation with Ananias sees a quite merent relationship:

one in which the disciple may ask questions, may even protest, but will stïii obey without

needing rebuke, and in which G d remains omnipotent but is also reassuring, even

avuncular. It may be simplistic to see the dflerence as that between a stereotypidy Old

Testament God and a nereotypicaiiy New Testament God, but it is cenain that a

difference dong those lines is being represented.

A guide to the audience's response may be found in an udikely place: the dialogue

between the two soldiers that separates Ananias's conversation with God fiom his meeting

with Saul. The fourteen-line exchange between the two seems a throwaway scene, rneant

primarily to provide covering dialogue while the actor playing " A m i a s goth towurd

Sazrfe" (s-d. 247). However, the playwright again changes and expands upon the

Scriptural details of his source in specific and telling ways in this scene.

The account of Saul's cornpanions in Acts is unspecific, saying only that they

"aood amazed, hearUIg indeed a voice but seeing no man7' (Acts 9:7)." The Digby

playwright, however, expands this note into a brief but detailed dialogue:

PRIMUS MYLES. 1 maruayle gretly what yt doth mene,

To se owur master in thys hard stounde!

The wonder grett lythys bat were so shene

Smett hym doune of hys hors to pe grownde,

And me thowt that I hard a sounde

Of won spekyng wyth voyce delectable,

Whych was to [vs] wondefifi myrable.

SECUNDUS MYLES. Senenly thys ly3t was ferefùll to se,

Ther sperkys of @er were very feruent!

Yt uiflarnyd so greuosely about be countre,

That, by my trowth, 1 went we shuld a bene brent!

But now, serys, lett vs relente

Agape to Caypha and Anna to tell Pis chaunce,

How yt befell to vs thys greuauns (248-261).

The first soldier in this account heard a voice indeed but no words, "a sounde/Of won

spekyng" (252-253) only; the second does not seem to have heard a voice at a11 but saw

only the f ie . For a moment, the two soldiers are suspended between two worlds. The

first soldier concentrates on their master and on the "wondefiil myrable" (254) of the

3U "stabant mipefacti, audientes quidem vocem, neminem autem Mdentes"

speaking voice that he has hearâ, uiough he does so uncomprehendingly. The second,

however, admits gnidgingly only that the Msuai evidence of the event was "ferefùi", "very

feruent", and a "greuauns" (255-256, 261). Furthemore, they are not speaking only to

each other, but to the audience; the second soldier says not "se? but "serys" (259), and

invites the audience to retum with him to the high priests, to the world of visual icons of

power, and to incornprehension of the event they have witnessed.

The play continues at the Damascus focus. It seems certain that the audience is

meant to remah with Sad, not to return to Caiaphas and Annas either physically or

sympatheticaily, and are to be witnesses to Saul's joy at being nealed and baptized and to

the appearance of the Holy Spirit over him. And yet, Poeta's exposition of the scene

following Saul's conversion is rather blasé, emphasizing the teaching rather than the

moving function of the scene:

POETA. Thus Saule ys conuertyd, as ye se expres,

The very trw semant of our Lord Jhesu.

Non may be lyke to hys p e m t holynes,

So nobyli a doctor, constant and trwe;

After hys conuersyon neuer mutable, but styll insue

The lawys of god to teche euer more and more,

As Hoiy Scrypture teUyth whoso lyst to loke berfore.

Thus we comyie yow ail to Be Trynyte,

ConkIudyng thys stacyon as we cm or may,

Vnder correccyon of them bat letteryd be;

Howbeyt vnabIe, as 1 dare speke or Say,

The compyler hereof shufd translat veray

So holy a story, but wyth fauorable correccyon

Of my honorable masters, of ber benygne supplexion (346-3 59).

The centre of the play is not, it turns out, Sad's conversion in itself: but the sermon in

which Saul preaches to the audience on the Seven Deadly Sins. It is here that the

playwright most fiilly engages the audience, and most vividly shows the nature and

purpose of his centrai character.

This sermon is the play's primary example of extended rhetoric, and thus deserves

consideration at some length. It is a complex work of rhetoric in miniature, using al1 thne

means of persuasion and numerous strategies. Roben of Basevorn's description of Paul's

method of preaching as shown in the epistles is aiso a fair assessrnent of the Digby Saul's

sermon:

Paul used reason with great success, especially together with authority-

now taking a reason fiorn authority, now conforming reason with

authority, now cornrnending the hearers, now saddening them, now

flattering them, now disparaging them, now totally committing himself to

God, now helping himself with human industry3=

Al1 of these techniques, sometimes separately, sometimes combined, can be seen in Paul's

3U Robert of Basevorn, 7 k Fonn of Preaching Formu pruedicmFdi), trans. Leopold Krul, 7hree Medievai Rhetoricd Arts, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: U of California P, 1971 ) 129.

sermon.

The play's editors note that the sermon ftnctionaily is an iUustration of Acts 9:20,

"And hmediately he preached Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of GO^."^*' The

sermon itseif does indeed otnnn such doctrine, calling Jesus "owur Sauyour" (544), but in

its treamient of the Seven Deadly Sins it also shows a surprising use of Knpture as proof

As we have noted, the real Paul often used scripture as apodeictic proof, so does the

Digby Sad, but with a clifference. in the Pauline epistles, the Old Testament is quoted in

the Greek of the Septuagint, the same language in which Paul wrote3= and presumably in

which the recipients ofthe epistles read and conversai; the Digby Saul, on the other hand,

quotes Scripture in the Latin of the Vulgate, and does not always translate it . ïhree

examples show the effêcts that this practice has; in the first, Saul provides a translation

before introducing the quotation itself:

Pryde, bat of byttemes all baie begynnes,

Wythholdyng al1 fayth, yt fedyth and foysomys,

As Holy Scrypture baxyth playn wytnes:

uInitîum omttium peccatomm su[perJbia esr-

That often dystroyth both man and best (5 1 1-5 15).

Ln the second example, Saul translates the quotation after introducing it:

For Pryde and hys progeny mekenes confoundys.

"Quanto maior es tanto humilia te in omnibus"-

3" Baker, Murphy, and Hall Lute Medievd Religious Piays 196 n. 502.

"' "introduction to the New Testament," New Ojord Annotated Bible 1 168.

The gretter pou art, the lower loke thu be;

Bere the neuer Be hyer for Pi degre (547-550).

FinaDy, in this passage Sad does not diredy translate the quotation at aii:

Off ail vyces and foly, pryde ys the rwte;

Humylyte may not rayn ner yet indure.

@te, alak, that ys flower and boot,

Ys exylyd wher pryde hath socour.

"Omnzs qui se emitat humiliabitur."

Good Lord, gyf vs grace to vnderstond and perseuer,

ïhys wurd, as bou bydyst, to fii@U euer (5 16-522).

Effectively, Sad's sermon treats the Latin scriptures as proof in two different ways. Not

only does he cite them as the sources of his advice, but he also uses the language itself as a

kind of verbal icon. Earnon Duw notes326 that even many of the unleîîered would have

had some oral comprehension of Latin, although that comprehension may have b e n

limited to the recognition that Latin was now being spoken, and that the Latin was the text

upon which the sermon was based. In this sense, to the unlettered rnembers of the

audience particularly, quotations are similar in eEect to his closed letters of authority:

opaque verbal icons. ï h e key differences, of course, are that Sad's icons now derive

from God rather han from earthly powers, and that they are verbal rather than visual, but

203

the dynamic is ~ i m i l a r . ~ Saul uses them to indicate the authority of his teaching, and to

indicate that that source is the God of his audience's own comrnunity: the church.

The sermon itself, furthemore, is an elaborate though understated example of

rhetoric in its own right. Its understanding of its implied audience, its lïne of argument,

and its figures of thought and speech represent a distillation of many of the issues of

saintly rhetoric that medieval playwrights explored.

The audience, Saul notes immediately, is certainly a mixed lot. In his wish that

God should "Save Pis asemly bat here syttyth or aond" (504), he acknowledges the

varying levels of class, education, and wealth in the audience, as Mercy does in

Mmkmd.328 Yet he also, unlike Mercy the daughter of God, identifies himself with that

muted lot, by continuing, "For hys meke mercy, bat we do not spyli" (505). Having

established that the audience consins o f "Welbelovyd fryndys" (509), he launches into an

exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Saul's sermon emphasizes two pariicular sins: pride and l u ~ t . ~ ~ Saul's pnde, of

course, was manifest to the audience tiom the moment of his initiai appearance; his lust is

suggested by his statement upon conversion, "For my offencys, my body shai haue

'" See also Dillon, Larqpage and Stage, esp. 70-105, on the politics of multilingual plays in Tudor England.

At line 29: "O 3e souerens bat sytt and 3e brothem bat stonde iyght wppe." Ihe Macro P f q s , ed. Mark Eccles, EETS O.S. 262 (London: M o r d UP, 1969) 155.

'L

'" In this way the Digby play differs signjficantly fiom French and Latin plays on the same subject. Scherb, "Frame Structure" 130.

punycyon" (303).3m The l ua that Saul seerns t o be primarily guilty of, however, is not

sema1 lust, but rather the kind of thinking that places the law higher than grace:

For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the fiesb God,

sending his own Son in the Likeness of sinful flesh and of sin, hath

condemned sin in the flesh. That the justification of the law rnight be

tùlfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the

spirit (Rom 8:3-4)."'

Saul's sermon thus makes the audience reflect not only upon the ethos of the man they see

before t h e n but also upon the ethus of the man as he was before his conversion. Indeed,

the character o f Paul, like Augustine in the Confessions, "does not discredit his past

experience but rather actively incorporates it in a sense of guilt and illumination of the

present with the memory of past habits."332 Funhermore, in bringing Saul down upon the

platea to preach the sermon, as the play surely does, the playwright identifies the audience

with the early Christian community, Saul's original audience. Thus the play grounds its

audience's identity as Christians in centuries o f history as well as in doctrinal teaching.

Furtfiermore, far fiom a rnereIy inteliectual treatment of the Seven Deadly Sins, Saul's

330 In PLSYs 1992 production, directed by Kimberley M. Yates, Saul tore his proud knightly clothes off at this moment t o reveai something like a penitent's shifi beneath; it was a neatly made comection between the two sins.

33 1 "Nam quod impossible erat legi, in quo infirmabatur per carnem: Deus Filium suum rnittens in simiiitudinem a m i s peccati et de peccato, damnavit peccaturn in came, ut iustificatio legis impleretur in nobis, qui non secundum caniis ambulamus, sed secundum spiritum."

332 Jadwiga S. Smith, "The English Medieval Conversion Plays and the Doctrine of St . Augustine," Medïeval Perspectives 3 (1 988) 246.

description of them is rendered immediate and personai by bis identification with and of

the audience; when, for instance, he notes that pnde "oflen dystroyeth both most and

lest,"=' he recalls his earlier characterization of the audience and urges them to consider

the sin in their own lives.

Saul does not only rely on authority, and on identifjing himseifwith the audience,

however. He al= reasons with his audience, inviting them to foiiow an intelieaial

argument. For instance, the fourth stanza takes the form of a kuid of enthymeme;

Whoso in ptyde beryth hym to hye,

Wyth mysheff shalbe mekyd as 1 mak mensyon.

And 1 therfor assent and hUy ce@

In text, as 1 tell the trw entencyon

Of pe- goodnes and very locucyon:

"Noli tibi dico in uftum sapere sed tirne".

Thys ys my conseu: bere the not to hye! (523-529)

One could rewrite the stanza almost as a syiiogism: Al1 those who are proud wiU corne to

griefl, therefore (iyou wish to be saved) do not be one of the proud. The unspoken

"' The line is sometimes quoted as "both man and best," which is indeed what appears at line 5 1 5-page 1 8 of Baker, Murphy, and Haii. However, that line was written by the scribe who inserted the devils' m e , and is recopied at that point in the manuscript, probably to allow ease of reading. The original text, which is crossed out before the interpolation of the devils, r a d s "moa and lest", and appears on page 15 of Baker, Murphy, and Hall. The earlier reading, it seems to me, makes more sense in context. Both Furnivall and Bevington prefèr the "most and lest'' reading in their editions, though Coldewey prefers "man and best." See n e Digby Pfqys, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS e s . 73 (London: Oxford UP, 1896) 47, Bevington, Medieval Drama 682, and Ear& English Drama: An Anfhology, ed. John C. Coldewey (New York: Garland, 1993) 18 1.

206

assumption, h t the audience wishes to be saved, cleariy identifies the sermon as one that

takes place before the Christian community; in addition, the use of the scriptural quotation

as the conclusion, not premise, of the argument shows that Sad expects the audience to

realize that reason and revelation are not at odds with each other: in short, that they as

Christians have the responsibility and the capacky to think and to make moral decisions.

By cornparing the sermon to Saul's opening boas& one can see the change in

Saul's character that has taken place. Not o d y is the genre of the speech different-a

recoQlli7Rbly hode t i c speech rather than a tyrannical one-but so also is its style. Though

the verse form rem- the sarne, the language has becorne macaronic, and, strangely,

more abterative. Such lines as "Saue bis asemiy bat here syttyth or stond" (504) and

"Whych be provyd pryncypail and pryncys of poysons" (5 10) have no precedent in any of

Saul's prior speeches. Such sudden opacity of speech might be the opposite of what one

might expect, but as Jeanette Diiion has s h o ~ n , ~ ~ medievd plays were by no means of a

piece in their treatment of rhetoncal ~pacity.~~" its equation of Latinity and omateness

with holiness, 7ne Coriversiori of Saint Paul is in line with much other East Anglian

drama, including the N-Town cycle and The Cade of Perseverence, though not with, for

instance, the non-East Anglian Towneley cycle, whose Latfinglish dialectic is somewhat

d i f f e r e n ~ ' ~ ~ At any rate, the sudden change in Saul's very manner of speaking suggests

Dillon, Lartgt~age ond Stage 3 1-50.

335 I use the term "opacity" descriptively, not pejoratively, following Lanham, Motives of EIqtence 26.

3x Dillon, Language und Stage 5 1 .

the depth of the change in hirn, as does, perhaps, the moment of ambiguity when S a d

says, "'Lem at myself, for I am meke in harty-/Oww Lorde to hys seruantys thus he

sayt!!' (537-538). For a moment it seems as if Saul is speaking, even boasting, of himself

again, yet his attribution of the quotation to God forces the audience to rediirect its

understanding that it was not Saul talking on his own account: "not 1, but Christ [...] in

me" (Gd. 2:20). "7 The conversion of Saul is internal, sudden, and th~rough .~ ' his

authority fies in his humility and in his use of the Bible.

The sermon' s rhet orical characteristics may at first glance seem somewhat

obscured by the structure of the play as it now stands; coming afler the interpolateci scene

between Belial and -Mercury, with its visual and verbal pyrotechnies, Saul's sermon may

seem drab by comparison. The deviis' scene, indeed necessitates several challenges o f

performance, none of which are merely technical in nature. The first challenge consists in

the visible presence of Amas and Caiaphas. Immediately before the inserted scene, the

two high priests are visible to the audience for their discussion of what to do with the

newly converted Saul; indeed, the devils' discussion merely extends the sarne topic tùrther.

There is no apparent break before Belid's entrance, nor, thematically, does it seem that

there should be. Mon iikely, A m a s and Caiaphas must remain visible to the audience for

the duration of the devils' scene, and indeed for Saul's sermon following it. A second

challenge is the abrupt shifi in tone in switching fiom the devils to S a d In the original

'" "Non ego, [.. .] vero in me Christus."

'" John W. Veiz, "From Jerusalem to Damascus: Bilocal Dramaîurgy in Medieval and Shakespearean Conversion Plays," Comparative Drama 1 5 (1 98 1 - 1 982) 3 1 3 : "The conversion is unanticipated, without gradation, entire."

208

play, the change in tone need not have been quite so extreme. Annas and Caiaphas are

rather restrained in their laquage as Middle English dramatic viiiains go; compared to,

Say, the Coventry Herod or the Towneley Caiaphas, they seem quite civilized, even

urbane. Belial and Mercury, by contrast, rant and roar k e the worst tyrants cf the cycle

plays, rendering the contram with Sad's sermon far more extreme than in the original text.

Amas and Caiaphas's continueci visibiity a d y strengthens one of the basic

contrasts made in the original play: that between the visual and the verbal. As Relia1

ap pears "wyth thun& andfie" (s-d. 4 1 2), shouting, "beholde me" (4 1 3), he calls

attention to the visual. When the play is naged, the devils cal1 attention not only to their

own appearance but also to the visual aspects of the society of the high priests, even

tuming the priests themselves into icons:

My busshopys, thorow my motyon, Pei wyl hym sone devoure!

I haue movyd my prelatys, Cayphas and Anna,

To persew and put downe by powre ryall,

Thorow be sytyes of Darnaske and Liba,

Ail soch as do worship Be hye God supemall.

There deth ys conspyryd wythowt any fauoure at dl;

My busshopys hathe chosyne won most rygoms

Them to persew, howse name ys &rulus (41 8425).

In this speech, and in the foilowing exchange with Mercury, who suggests that the devils

should "Go to pe busshopys and moue bem pryvelye" (478), the two ubusshopys77 are

209

surely still visible to the audience, though unmoving. In an ironic reversa! of expectation,

the devils or false gods refer, probably by gesture, to the two unmoving priests as the

solution to their p r ~ b l e r n . ~ ~ ~ Amas and Caiaphas seem to have tumed h to icons, just as

Saul' s letter fiom them was an icon. Furthemore, Annas and Caiaphas may also be

present during Saul's sennon, metaphorically established in the audience's sight as

unmoving, wordless idols, in sharp conuast to Saul's preaching of the Word.

The second of the two challenges, the abrupt shift in tone, also reinforces the

original play's strategies. If the priests exempl* the mute stillness of an id01 then the

devils exemplifL the "unstable, restless, and dissonant" nature of evil, and provide a

striking contrast to the "stabIe, tranquil, and h a r m o n i ~ u s " ~ preaching of Paul. hdeed,

the devils' scene makes such a contrast more strongly than any part of the original play,

and may even correct a possible misunderstanding. While the original play moves its

central character âom bluster to stillness, it also comects a great deal of spectacle and

noise with the appearance of God. To be sure, the playwright seerns to have tried not to

make that connection overly strong; the stage direction reads, "Here cornyth a fement,

wyth gret tempst. md h I e fatlyrh dm11 of hys horse"; only when "&at [isj done" does

the action indicate that " G d e d p k y t h in heqm'' (S. d. 1 83). Still, the moment passes

quickly and in performance the separate actions do seem to be one action. It is perhaps

for this reason that the revisers of the play included such insistently pyrotechnie devils; if

339 Compare, for instance, the King of Maneilles' appeals to the id01 in the play of Mary Magablene 1538-1577.

Johnston, "Word Made Fiesh 23 5 .

210

God creates one explosion, the devils create three: "thunder andfie" (s.d. 412) for

Belial' s entrance, ''afietyvg" (s-d. 43 3) for Mercury's entrance, and " a ~ ~ e f l m e . md a

rempsf' (s-d. 502) for their joint exit. Furthemore, the devils' dialogue is marked by

such inarticulate noises as "Ho, ho" (412), ""Ho!" (426), "Ho! Ow3t, ovvllt!" (433)' "Ho"

(440). "Ho! Ow3t, ow3t!" (454), "Ho! Ow3t, O-!" (466), "Ow3t!" (47 1 ), and "Ho"

(48 3 ), and the stage directions spec* that Mercury shail enter "ctyeng und r o y f (s.d.

43 3 ) and that they both "bsall rore and crye" (S. d. 47 1 ). The two are not merely

spectacular and noisy but also anti-verbal.

Heather Hill-Vaquez argues rightiy that this "small interpolated scene [. . . ] can

encourage interpretive alterations to the play that extend beyond the scene' s

bo~ndaries."~' However, as she also notes, the devils' scene is not necessarily reformist,

but could easily be a reinfiorcement of the play's previous attitudes and s t r a t e g i e ~ . ~ ~ In

fact, the argument that Hill-Vasquez makes for the ailegedly reforming purpose of the

deviis' scene is unlikely to be m e . It is prdcated fist on the possibility that the devils

were costumeci in ecclesiastical vestments, a contention for which the text of the play

provides no support; and second on the extremely unlikely possibility that these two

devils, who are entirely open with the audience about their e d purposes, rnight somehow

be able to "mislead the audience spirituaiIf' and seduce them into '"a beguiling trap" of

false religi~n,~' thus ailowing Sad to re-conven the audience through his sermon. But

Hill-Vaquez, '%ssibilities of Performance" 5.

342 Hill-Vasquez, "Possibilities of Performance" 1 8 11.29.

Hill-Vaquez, "Possibilities of Performance" 6.

these are not smooth and eloquent Miitonian devils, and it is a mistake to read them as

SUC^.^

One Carnot fïnally say for sure that the Digby Conversion of &int Paul is

Catho tic, Protestant, proto-Protestant, reactionary, or reformist . But certain features of

the play are clear: its use of the visual is both spectacular and seIf4tical; its caution about

rhetoric and the use of fogos in the face of mystery is balanced with its emphasis that the

word and persuasion are needfùl; its powerfiil use o f p t h o s echoes that of other Middle

English playwrights' treatment of saints, while its use of &os in estabiishing the character

of Paul provides a figure who is unarnbiguously scriptural and insistent1 y textual.

In the end, ïhe Conversi011 of Saint Pau[ is a complex study in the dficulties and

ambiguities of using rhetorical and theatrical techniques to convey divine mystenes

through the person of a saint. That it can be seen to have elements of both the medieval

way of looking at the saints, through the lens of "solidarity through ~uffenng"~~' and the

newer way of seeins them as "clar img the nature of the WordY6 reflects, to be sure, a

tension between two ways of being retigious; but the Digby playwright and his revisers

seem to have been concerned overaii with the audience's immediate experience of the

play, of the word. and of the person of Saul. As such, they create and revise a saint play

3U On the contrary, in my own experience it is this scene which makes the evil of Amas, Caiaphas, and the pre-conversion S a d completely unambiguous; though our audiences enjoyed laughing at the devils, nobody followed them or seemed to want their attention.

Dut&. SITpping of the Alturs 180.

Y6 Peter Happé, "The Protestant Adaptation of the Saint Play," The Sbitrt Plqy in Medieval Europe 2 1 4.

212

that, U e the others we have seen, leads its audience imaginatively nom a position of

potential doubt to a position of f~th logically, ethically, and sympathetically.

Conclusion

T. S. Eliot's Magus reports that when he and his fellow ma@ found the Chnst

child in Bethiehem, ail they experienced was the feling that "it was @ou may say)

satisfactory" (3 1).'% Eliot's Magus and his cornpanions find it easier, even &ter their

long, cold, and hard joumey, to remain in unbelief than to move into a position of faith.

They find it easier to remain "in the old dispensationJWith an aiien people clutching their

gods" (4 1-42) than to embrace a new dispensation, even though they know they are "no

longer at ease" (41) and never again can be. Furthemore, the Magus's apostrophe to the

readers indicates that he expects at least some of them to recognize the feeling.

Of course, Eliot's "Joumey of the Magi" is a modem poem, and to a medieval

audience it may have been an almost inconceivable one. Perhaps more understandable in

any era, however, is the less weli-known poem that follows it in Ariel Poerns, "A Song for

Simeon," in which the old prophet declares, "Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of

thought and prayer,/Not for me the ultimate vision./Grant me thy peace" (29-3 l).'" In

any era, faith and its implications are difficult.

Perhaps Christian wrïters have always known this to be true, and have often tumed

to the persuasive arts as a result. Milton, for example, seerns to use rhetoric as a weapon

to assail the reader's conscience and unbelief In his influentid book on Milton, Suprised

350 T. S. Eliot, 9oumey of the Magi," 7he Complete Poems and Plqs : 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, 1962) 68-69. Line numbers will be cited in the text.

"l T. S. Eliot, "A Song for Simeon," Compfeie Poerns md Plays 69-70.

2 14

by Sin, Stanley Fish argues that "logic is a saféguard against a rhetoricd effect only d e r

the effect has been noted. [...] [Tlhere is no adequate defense against eloquence at the

moment of impact."352 W e Fish's understanding of rhetoric is bruîaliy put (and perhaps

that is appropnate for a study of Milton), it describes weU both the instantaneously and the

continuously manipulative effects that rhetoric can have on a reader or an audience. It

does not, however, give that reader or audience enough credit, for it does not allow for

the possibiiïty that a reader or audience might, in fact, have the time and ability to make

decisions, to reach choices and sympathies. In short, it makes no distinction between

persuasion, in which the audience freely a~sents,"~ and coercion, in which it has no choice

but to consent-or is led to believe that it has no choice.

Cenainly, the choices that an audience makes in expenencing Middle English

biblicd drama are, in some ways, predeterrnined for them; certainly, the rhetoric of the

piaywrjghts has "moments of impact'' upon the audience, moments that require decisions

and responses; certainiy, the plays compel, or try to compel, the audience. Yet the

playwrights were aware of the dangerous nature of their tool. They were aware that

rhetoric's "fine phrases" may "flatter the desires of the cupidinous self'3s4 and ofken

worked to show its limits, that rhetoric is in itselfa morally neutral instrument that "is

'" Stanley Fish, Sutprised by Sin: nie Reoder itl Paradise Lost, 2" ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997) 6 .

353 Augustine, despite his arguments for the necessity of God's grace, nonetheless insists that humanity's acceptance of that grace is voluntary, not forced. See, for instance, De piriru et litzera, ed. William Bright (Oxford: Clarendon P, 19 14) 2 1.54,34.60.

'" Fi sh, Suprised by Sin 6.

215

used to give conviction to both tmth and fal~ehood.""~ The importance of grounding the

audience's experience in the commonality of the Church becarne paramount, so that

private interpretation did not veer into the heretical.

The playwrîghts thus associated the saints with some of their most subtle rhetoncal

effects, often concentrathg on the appeal of ethos and, especially, pathos- Though these

are ofien thought of as the disreputable species of argument, the medieval playwrights

knew both their power and their utility in the arena of faith. To argue by logos aione may

end up in mere inteiiectualism, the son of aridity that Augustine wamed agaha." But

the character of a saint and the appeai that such a character can make to the emotions of

an audience may not only avoid aridity but aiso bring about "the enormous didactic and

imaginative effectiveness of the religious plays of the late Middle Ages: once seen, never

f~rgotten."'~' By coopting the tools of rhetoric for the side of the saintly, the medieval

plapvrights created a tool to move the audience to holy living.

Indeed, the flawed humanity of the four saints of this study shows that the

playwrights who portrayed them recognized and acknowledged the limitations not only of

their art in portrayhg perfection, but of humanity in achieving it. Thomas, Mary

Magdalene, Joseph, and Paul have the common feature of existing at liminal spaces

between faith and doubt, a space that al1 humanity surely inhabits to some degree. In the

figures of these saints, a medievai audience may have found not only role models but also

"' Augustine, De doctrina Christim 4.1.4; 011 Christimr Teuching 1 0 1 .

'% De doctrim Christicma 4.11.4 5 ; On Christian T ' i n g 1 0 1 - 1 02.

357 Duw, Stripping of the A ltars 68.

216

means of bnnging the power of the divine into their own iives, as individuals and as a

comrnunity. The audience, in foliowing Paul, Joseph, or Mary Magdalene around the

playing space, o r even in following ïhomas's intellectual doubts, may be as imperfect as

they, but the sanctity of those they foliow suggests that imperfection rnay not be an

obnacie to the sacred. As Auden wrote, "To choose what is dificuit al1 one's days/As if

it were easy, that is faith. Joseph, p r a i ~ e . " ~ ~ ~ Indeed, the particularly rniraculous

intervention of God into these saints' Lives, the divine eruptions they expenence, are

panicularly salient reminders of divine power, mercy, and compassion: a compassion that

the audience also is invited to feel for the flawed, struggling saints in its midst, and for

each other by extension.

Furthemore, it is ultimately the imper f i ion and hwnility of the saintly exemplars

before the audience that aiîows it the ffeedom to consent, and that makes rhetoric a proper

tool for playwrights to use in achieving consent. In assedng this, we must remember

again the perspective of the York Chna in the 'lemptation," that the audience is capable

of conscious participation, of reaching decisions and achieving them, and are not, as

Diabolus betieves, capable only of being buUied or unconsciously manipulated. The

propagandistic ponrayal of sheer perfection, of awe, of grandeur unailoyed by any

humanity, may be thought to be a more proper way to po-y the divine and its power

than are. Say, portrayals of the argumentative Thomas or the crotchety Joseph, but that is

not the forrn of presentation that will give the audience the oppominity to make actual

''' W. H. Auden, "For the Time Being," Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Vintage-Random House, 199 1) 365.

217

choices. Indeed, the type of character that is mon portrayed in terms of grandeur and awe

is not the saint but the tymnt, not Mary Magdalene but Pontius Pilate, not the apode Paul

but the Sad who breathes out threats.

The rhetoric of the saints is subtle where the rhetonc of the tyrants and d a i m is

not; the rhetoric of the saints conveys divine stillness'" mked with affêctivity where the

rhetoric of the tyrants and vilains conveys fallen activity mixed with denation. For

instance, the York Herod's rhetoric is as ornate as his costume, as he speaks of his own

grandeur:

The clowdes clapped in clerenes bat ber clematis inclosis-

Jubiter and Jouis, Martis and Mercurij emyde-

Raykand ouere my rialté on rawe me reioyses,

BIonderande ber blastis to blaw when 1 bid (York 16/14)

Yet ail Herod's ranting amounts to littie; from the ailiteration to theprosopopoia to the

zeugma, the blundering blasts of his speech move the audience not to sympathy but to

antipathy. He establishes no connection with them, focusing instead on hirnself: "How

thynke 3e ber taies bat 1 talde?A am worthy, witty, and wyse" (York 16/21-22). By

contrast, the York Joseph, far less ornate at first glance, is aiso far more subtle:

Are was 1 wayke, nowe am 1 wight,

My lyrnes to welde ay at my wiile.

1 loue my maker most of myght

That such grace has graunte me tiile.

359 Johnston, "Word Made Flesh."

Nowe schail no hatyll do vs hanne,

1 haue oure helpe here in rnyn arme.

He will vs fende

Whereso we lende

Fro tene and tray.

Late vs goo with goode chere-

Farewell and haue good day-

God blisse vs al1 in fere (York 1 812 19-23 0).

The York Joseph's alliteration, spzecdoche ("oure helpe"), and final apostrophe to the

audience, unlike the York HerodTs rhetorical colours, are effkctive in moMng an audience

to sympathy, and the reason is that the apostrophe is t o "vs ali in fere." The imperfect

saints like Joseph establish the sympathetic c o ~ e c t i o n to the audience that aliows the

plays to work their affective devotionai effect, bringing the audience together as members

of the church.

Utimately, the rhetoric of the saints attempts to appeal to the audience's better

nature, and to b ~ g the audience, as a cornmunity, to faith by consent. Not merely

teaching, not even merely delightino the audience with affective experiences, the saints in

medieval biblical plays achieve sympathy, consent, and solidarity among the faiffi l . They

help the audience understand its role as part of the same sacred community that stretches

back to the Wetime of Christ, and they bring the audience, through identification,

sympathy, and the need for interpretation, t o a position of unity and faith. That is the

nature of the divine rhetoric to which the saints point.

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