Abstract
The Towneley Second Shepherds’ Play, probably the medieval drama best known to English-speaking audiences, and one already discussed in terms of money and class in Chapter 5, opens in a world in desperate need, both physical and (though the shepherds do not always recognize this) spiritual; although most of the play concerns the shepherds’ attempts to meet their physical needs, it ends in a world still cold and hungry, but spiritually satisfied (the second passage above clearly contradicts one critic’s view that physical cold represents spiritual need).3 In Chapter 5 I suggested that this final state of satisfaction represents a co-optation of the class issues raised at the beginning by a Christian panacea. In this chapter, I would like to examine more closely just how the play is able to arrive at this state—by means of a theatrical experience within the play itself that links the beginning with the end. I will then turn to comparable quasi-theatrical events depicted in other biblical dramas to make some suggestions about how the audiences of these plays, both those depicted in the play texts and those who watch them, might be related to the issues of power and resistance that I have discussed in other contexts.
1 Pastor: Lord, what these weders ar cold!
And I am yll happyd.
I am nerehande dold,
So long haue I nappyd;
My legys thay fold,
My fyngers ar chappyd.
It is not as I wold,
For I am al lappyd
In sorow.1
1 Pastor: Fare well, lady,
So fare to beholde,
With thy childe on thi kne.
2 Pastor: Bot he lygys full cold.
Lord, well is me!
Now we go, thou behold.
3 Pastor: Forsothe, allredy
It semys ro be told Full oft.2
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Notes
Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley (eds.) (1994) The Towneley Plays, 2 vols., EETS s.s. 13–14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 1, pp. 126–27 [126–57], 11. 1–9.
See Jeffrey Helterman (1981) Symbolic Action in the Plays of the Wakefield Master (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press), pp. 98–103.
see also Jerzy Grotowski (1968) “He Wasn’t Entirely Himself,” in his Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon and Schuster), p. 125 [117–25].
See Jody Enders (1999) The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), pp. 7–8, 11–15, 83, 95, 118, 155–56, 214–15.
Margaret Rogerson (2009) Playing a Part in History: The York Mysteries, 1951–2006 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), pp. 82–100.
Jean Duvignaud (1971) Le Théâtre, et après (Paris: Casterman), p. 52.
Duvignaud, Le Théâtre, p. 56. These observations, and the plays to be discussed in this chapter, also have much in common with the concept of “metatheatre”: “theatre pieces about life seen as already theatricalized”: Lionel Abel (1963) Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form (New York: Hill and Wang), p. 60.
Rosemary Woolf (1972) The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 190.
William Manly (1963) “Shepherds and Prophets: Religious Unity in the Towneley Secunda Pastomm,” PMLA 78: 151–55;
Arnold Williams (1968) “Typology and the Cycle Plays: Some Criteria,” Speculum 43: 677–84;
Linda Marshall (1972) ‘“Sacral Parody’ in the Secunda Pastomm,” Speculum 47: 720–36;
and Walter E. Meyers (1975) “Typology and the Audience of the English Cycle Plays,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 8: 145–58.
and cf. Homer A. Watt (1940) “The Dramatic Unity of the ‘Secunda Pastorum,’” in Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown (New York: New York University Press), pp. 158–66,
See also Maynard Mack, Jr. (1978) “The Second Shepherds’ Play. A Reconsideration,” PMLA 93: 78–85,
Thomas J. Jambeck (1978–79) “The Canvas-Tossing Allusion in the Secunda Pastorum,” Modern Philology 76: p. 51 [49–54].
Claude Chidamian (1947) “Mak and the Tossing in the Blanket,” Speculum 22: 186–87.
On the didacticism of medieval drama’s self-conscious theatricality, see the essays collected in Philip Butterworth (ed.) (2007) The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre (Turnhout: Belpols),
Peter Happé (2007a) “Expositor Figures in Some Cycle Plays in French and German,” pp. 45–68;
Nerida Newbigin (2007) “Directing the Gaze: Expository Modes in Late Medieval Italian 21. Lucifer, in R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills (eds.) The Chester Mystery Cycle, 2 vols., EETS s. s. 3, 9 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974–86), vol. 1, p. 6 [1–13], 11. 116–19.
Robert Edwards (1982) “Techniques of Transcendence in Medieval Drama,” in Clifford Davidson, C. J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (eds.) Drama in the Middle Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays (New York: AMS), p. 115 [103–17].
Paul Aebischer (ed.) (1963) Le Mystère d’Adam (Ordo representacionis Ade) (Geneva: Droz), p. 28, 11. 1–6.
Michel Mathieu (1966) “La Mise en scène du Mystère d’Adam,” Marche romane 16: 52 [47–56].
See Brian A. McConachie (1979) “The Staging of the Mystère dAdam,” Theatre Survey 20: 31, 34 [27–42].
Per Nykrog (1974–75) “Le Jeu dAdam: une interprétation,” Mosaic 8: 7–16.
See Clifford Davidson (1996) Technology, Guilds, and Early English Drama (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute).
Peter W. Travis (1982) Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 98–99.
William Calin (1962) “Structural and Doctrinal Unity in the Jeu dAdam,” Neophilologus 46: 249–54.
Jean-Charles Payen (1972) “Idéologie et théâtralité dans l’Ordo representations Ade,” Études anglaises 25:20–21 [19–29].
The text of this hymn is given in Rudolf Meier (ed. and trans.) (1963) Das Osterspiel von Muri, in Das Innsbrucker Osterspiel; Das Osterspiel von Muri (Stuttgart: Reclam), fragment IV, pp. 138–40 [114–55], 11. 47–54.
Eduard Hartl (ed.) (1937) Das Osterspiel von Muri, in Das Drama des Mittelalters: Osterspiele (Leipzig: Reclam), p. 287 [273–90].
see F. M. Salter (1940) The Banns of the Chester Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 41.
see Lawrence M. Clopper (1977–78) “The History and Development of the Chester Cycle,” Modern Philology 75, p. 227 [219–46].
see Christina M. Fitzgerald (2007) The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture (New York: Palgrave), especially pp. 1–12.
See Clifford Davidson (ed.) (1981) A Middle English Treatise on the Playing of Miracles (Washington, DC: University Press of America).
Sharon Aronson-Lehavi (2011) Street Scenes: Late Medieval Acting and Performance (New York: Palgrave);
V. A. Kolve (1966) The Play Called Corpus Christi (Stanford: Stanford University Press), pp. 10–32.
See Robert W. Hanning (1982) ‘“You Have Begun a Parlous Pleye’: The Nature and Limits of Dramatic Mimesis as a Theme in Four Middle English ‘Fall of Lucifer’ Cycle Plays,” in Clifford Davidson, C. J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (eds.) Drama in the Middle Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays (New York: AMS), pp. 140–68;
Martin Stevens (1977) “Language as Theme in the Wakefield Plays,” Speculum 52, 100–17.
See David L. Jeffrey (1974–75) “Franciscan Spirituality and the Rise of Early English Drama,” Mosaic 8: 17–46.
See Clifford Davidson (1975) “Thomas Aquinas, the Feast of Corpus Christi, and the English Cycle Plays,” Michigan Academician 7: 103–10.
Nicholas Love (2004) The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael Sargent (Exeter: University of Exeter Press).
See Jeffrey, “Franciscan Spirituality,” pp. 22–23; Kathleen Ashley (1978) “Divine Power in Chester Cycle and Late Medieval Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 39: 387–404
Jeffrey (1979) “Chester Cycle and Nominalist Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40: 477;
Clifford Davidson (1984) From Creation to Doom: The York Cycle of Mystery Plays (New York: AMS), pp. 96–97.
see Robert D. Marshall (1973–74) “The Development of Medieval Drama: A New Theology,” Studies in Medieval Culture 14: 407–17,
Thomas J. Jambeck (1975) “The Dramatic Implications of Anselmian Affective Piety in the Towneley Play of the Crucifixion,” Annuale mediaevale 16: 110–27.
Sandro Sticca (1970) The Latin Passion Play: Its Origins and Development (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 173–74.
Sandro Sticca (1988) The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press), p. 120.
Richard Beadle (ed.) (2009–13) The York Plays, 2 vols., EETS s. s. 23–24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), vol. 2, p. xxii, n.16.
Peter Happé (ed.) English Mystery Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 525.
Sarah Beckwith (2001) Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 65.
M. J. Young (1967) “The York Pageant Wagon,” Speech Monographs 34: 17 [1–20].
Richard J. Collier (1978) Poetry and Drama in the York Corpus Christi Play (Hamden, CT: Archon), p. 125.
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© 2015 Robert S. Sturges
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Sturges, R.S. (2015). Conclusion: The Authority of the Audience. In: The Circulation of Power in Medieval Biblical Drama. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137073440_7
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