‘By God’s Arse’: Genre, Humour and Religion in William Wager’s Moral Interludes

Stelling, Lieke

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_17

Lieke Stelling³

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the theoretical problem raised by the depiction of reprobate protagonists and their demise in two plays that present themselves emphatically as comedies and humorous drama. Rather than taken seriously as fully fledged Christian comedies, William Wager’s Reformation interludes The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art and Enough Is as Good as a Feast have been interpreted as early tragedies or dismissed as flawed comedies because of what critics have regarded as their tragic endings and coarse humour. I argue that while the plays’ theology was informed by the new Protestant doctrine of double predestination, its humour was still firmly rooted in a late medieval appreciation of comedy as a weapon against evil and instrument of Christian hope. From this perspective, even the portrayals of the deaths of the protagonists can be perceived as comforting and fitting as genuinely comedic endings. The plays help us gain a more complex understanding of the historical correlation between humour and religion.

I would like to thank Jillian Snyder and Robert Pierce for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Of course, all mistakes and inadequacies are my own.

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Notes

1.
Anonymous, ‘The Second Shepherds’ Pageant from Wakefield’, ll. 535–38.
2.
See, for instance, the second chapter of Bowers, Radical Comedy.
3.
Bowers, Radical Comedy, 15.
4.
Gilhus, Laughing Gods, 84, 94.
5.
Thomas, ‘The Place of Laughter’, 79.
6.
See, for instance, Ghose, Shakespeare and Laughter, 133; Burke, Popular Culture, 295.
7.
Grantley, English Dramatic Interludes, 91.
8.
‘humour’, Oxford English Dictionary, 9b.
9.
Wager, The Longer Thou Liuest, sig A1r; Wager, Inough Is as Good as a Feast, sig A1r. All further references to these works are to R. Mark Benbow’s modern edition. One of the few scholars who have noted the contrast between the plays’ endings and descriptions as comedies is Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, 114.
10.
Woodes, The Conflict of Conscience. Sig. A1r. It is worth noting that this play has two alternative endings, one featuring the damnation of the protagonist and the other his redemptive death-bed conversion.
11.
Wager, Enough, ll. 34–36, 83–84.
12.
Potter, The English Morality Play, 57.
13.
Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England, 8; Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors, and People, 25.
14.
Rozett, The Doctrine of Election, passim.
15.
Ibid., 88, 93. Potter, The English Morality Play, 117–19.
16.
Guinle, ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’, 156.
17.
Benbow, ‘Introduction’, xiv.
18.
Ibid., xvi.
19.
Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, 174, 229, 248; Bevington, From Mankind to Marlowe, 163, 183.
20.
Tarantino, ‘Between Peterborough and Pentecost’, 76.
21.
Ibid., 75.
22.
Wager, The Longer Thou Livest, ll. 409, 501, 504.
23.
Ibid., ll. 472–76.
24.
Ibid., ll. 341, 345, 347, 356.
25.
Ibid., ll. 389, 393.
26.
Ibid., ll. 379, 1092, 425.
27.
Ibid., ll. 1265–68.
28.
Tarantino, ‘Between Peterborough and Pentecost’, 56.
29.
Ibid., 81.
30.
Ibid., 79–80.
31.
Kolve, The Play Called Corpus Christi, 139.
32.
Ibid., 134.
33.
Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins, 98–102.
34.
Ibid., 102.
35.
Prescott, ‘The Ambivalent Heart’, passim; Mallinson, ‘Humor’, 350.
36.
Benbow, The Longer Thou Livest, 98 n379. All scriptural references are taken from the Geneva Bible.
37.
Wager, The Longer Thou Livest, l. 1799.
38.
Ibid., ll. 1805–6.
39.
Ibid., ll. 1857–58.
40.
Benbow, The Longer Thou Livest, 141 n1401.
41.
Wager, The Longer Thou Livest, l. 1415.
42.
Marlowe, Dr Faustus (A-Text) 5.1.116–18.
43.
Ibid., 2.3.80.
44.
Ibid., 5.2.113. See also Nuttall, The Alternative Trinity, 46–48. In the B-text, the phrase ‘My God, my God’ was replaced with ‘O mercy, heaven!’ According to Nuttall, this ‘suggests strongly that contemporaries of Marlowe noticed the biblical echo and were made uncomfortable by it’ (46n.).
45.
Marlowe, Dr Faustus (B-Text), 5.3.4, 6–7.
46.
Screech, Laughter at the Foot of the Cross, 57, 58.
47.
Ibid., 307.
48.
Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, 248.
49.
Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 13.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Ibid., 195.
52.
Ibid., 196.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Potter, The English Morality Play, 119.
56.
Quoted in Cressy and Ferrell (ed.) Religion and Society in Early Modern England, 74.
57.
Ibid.
58.
Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination, 46.
59.
Rozett, The Doctrine of Election; Diehl, Staging Reform; Streete, Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England; Waldron, Reformations of the Body; Mullaney, The Reformation of Emotions.
60.
Potter, The English Morality Play, 117.
61.
Morreall, Comedy, Tragedy and Religion, 2.
62.
Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 432–33.
63.
Lippitt, Humour and Irony in Kierkegaard’s Thought, 130.
64.
Ibid., 130.
65.
Ibid., 132–33.
66.
Cox, The Feast of Fools, 150, 153.

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Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Lieke Stelling

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Department of English Studies, Durham University, Durham, UK
Daniel Derrin
Department of History, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
Hannah Burrows

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Stelling, L. (2020). ‘By God’s Arse’: Genre, Humour and Religion in William Wager’s Moral Interludes. In: Derrin, D., Burrows, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_17

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56646-3_17
Published: 13 January 2021
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