4
The extent to which plays such as the Ordinalia de Origine Mundi of the Cornish Ordinalia, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, Bewnans Ke: The Life of St Kea, Gwreans an bys, the York, Chester, Towneley and N.town plays closely follow biblical and other narrative sources varies according to their adopted fidelity to didactic purpose. Observed action, as expressed in explicit stage directions, may be seen to promote didactic intention and in doing so clarify and determine the theatrical identity of these plays, some of which have been inaccurately criticised owing to the dominance of their didactic adherence to these kinds of sources. Because of this allegiance to such sources, some plays have been described as: ‘of a low standard’, ‘on the whole very dull’, ‘insipid to a degree beyond Hymns Ancient and Modern at its tritest’, ‘primitive’, ‘one of the dullest in our language’, ‘naïve and ludicrously inadequate’ and ‘may I add, generally more ridiculous’.1 These criticisms ignore, avoid or misunderstand the importance of didactic orientation and its inevitable influence upon the nature of theatrical outcome.2 Such critics create superficial judgements that are not based on any acknowledged medieval theatrical criteria. The assessments are either based on post-Reformation conditions or more modern practices of theatre as encountered at the time of writing. Eleanor Prosser is critical of these kinds of approaches when she succinctly and pertinently states:
I have, perhaps, belabored the obvious, but almost all dramatic criticism of the mysteries has been in fact literary criticism. The two must not be confused. This is not to deny that drama can be evaluated solely as literature, but it is surely unjust to reject a play as ‘bad drama’ because it does not meet certain standards that were irrelevant at the time of its creation. If the true potentialities of any drama are to be understood, the critic must identify himself with the audience watching a production under conditions that the playwright intended.3
In the Ordinalia de Origine Mundi of the Cornish Ordinalia, stage directions in the story of Noah adhere closely to the biblical narrative and, in doing so, maintain the elements of wonder of the original. Below are three stage directions that encompass that aspect of the story that deals with the search and anticipation of finding dry land. Following each of the stage directions and their translations are the equivalent passages with their translations from the Bible (Vulgate):
Et tunc mittet corvum extra et ultra non est reversa
[And then he shall send out a raven, and it has not returned]
Vulgate: Cumque transissent quadraginta dies, aperiens Noe fenestram arcae quam fecerat, dimisit corvum, qui egrediebatur et non revertebatur donec siccarentur aquae super terram.
[And after that forty days were passed, Noah, opening the window of the ark which he had made, sent forth a raven, which went forth and did not return till the waters were dried up upon the earth.]
Et tunc mittet columbam extra quae statim reuertetur ad navem et capietur intra
[And then he shall send out the dove, which shall immediately return to the ship, and be taken in.]
Vulgate: Emisit quoque columbam post eum ut videret si iam cessassent aquae super faciem terrae, quae cum non invenisset ubi requiesceret pes eius, reversa est ad eum in arcam, aquae enim erant super universam terram. Extenditque manum et adprehensam intulit in arcam.
[He sent forth also a dove after him to see if the waters had now ceased upon the face of the earth, but she, not finding where her foot might rest, returned to him into the ark, for the waters were upon the whole earth. And he put forth his hand and caught her and brought her into the ark.]
Et mittet aliam columbam que revertetur portans ramum olive in ore suo
[And he shall send another dove, which shall return, bringing a branch of olive in her mouth.]
Vulgate: Expectatis autem ultra septem diebus aliis, rursum dimisit columbam ex arca. At illa venit ad eum ad vesperam, portans ramum olivae virentibus foliis in ore suo. Intellexit ergo Noe quod cessassent aquae super terram. Expectavitque nihilominus septem alios dies, et emisit columbam, quae non est reversa ultra ad eum.
[And having waited yet seven other days, he again sent forth the dove out of the ark. And she came to him in the evening, carrying a bough of an olive tree with green leaves in her mouth. Noah therefore understood that the waters were ceased upon the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and he sent forth the dove, which returned not any more unto him.]4
The first impression to be gained from a comparison between the content of the Bible and that of its stage direction counterparts is that the Bible contains more descriptive detail. The Bible also provides the motivational elements for the respective actions, whereas the stage directions simply provide details of the basic action as seen and recorded by the observer. Noah’s sons do not appear in the biblical version, although they do appear in the play and provide otherwise missing motivational triggers. Some of that which is missing in the stage directions, but recorded in the Bible, is provided by the play text itself. When Noah sends out the raven, the stage direction states that it ‘returned no more’. This is in partial accordance with the Vulgate account where the raven ‘did not return till the waters were dried up upon the earth’. The Coverdale Bible states that the raven ‘flew out, and cam agayne, vntyll the waters were dryed vp vpon the earth’.5 The implication, of course, is that it returned before ‘the waters were dryed vp vpon the earth’. A more precise meaning of ‘flew out, and cam agayne’ is offered by the King James Bible when it says that the raven ‘went foorth to and fro, vntill the waters wer dried vp from off the earth’. In the play, it is clear from the text that Shem’s rationale for sending out the ‘crow’ is concerned with the event that the raven should not return because it would then be obvious that it had found some food on dry land: ‘If it finds carrion, certainly,/It will always stay upon it’.6 The biblical account of sending out the dove refers to three outings, and the same understanding is applied to the prospective non-return of it.7 The stage directions simplify the biblical account by requiring only two outings of the dove. Perhaps it should not be too surprising that these stage directions provide simplified accounts of action when it is remembered that medieval stage directions exist as records of that which has previously happened. That which has been witnessed earlier simply records the act and not its motivation. This condition may be further supported from the observation that stage directions are principally concerned with recording conditions, action and descriptions. Presumably, they do not stipulate motivation or reasons for it because the observer/writer has not observed them.
Stage Directions as Commentary
Unlike development of the story of Noah in the Ordinalia de Origine Mundi of the Cornish Ordinalia, the story of the Cornish Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek is not derived from the Bible: it owes its source to Cornish ‘ritual, legend, history, and oral tradition’.8 Until discovery of the Cornish play Bewnans Ke: The Life of St Kea, in 2000, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek had been the sole surviving example of a Cornish and English saint play. Both plays are based on Cornish legends. Stage directions in both plays demonstrate similar civic, dramatic and theatrical concerns along with some vestigial examples of a kind not prominent elsewhere. Although both plays contain stage directions that record stage action, they also provide added descriptions as commentary upon the plays’ narratives.
In Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, Jesus has instructed the archangels Michael and Gabriel to ‘Let the food of heaven be given To Meriasek’, and a stage direction determines that they descend to earth. It is at this point that the following description occurs:
Sumens cibum cum laudibus diuinis epulis quotidie sentit se refectum
[Taking sustenance with praises of God, every day he feels himself
nourished with sumptuous food.]9
This statement is not part of the text, although it is written by the main scribe, underlined in red and written within the same line pattern as the text.10 It appears to be a comment upon the text, which says much the same thing as the text, and in its current form is superfluous to it. If this statement is not intended as a comment upon the narrative, it may well be recorded as an authorial acknowledgement of the source material from which the scene has been developed. This kind of arrangement appears to have been the case exhibited in some of the Chester plays where biblical sources are quoted as those from which the narrative text is derived.11 Bewnans Ke: The Life of St Kea presents comparable issues and is considered to have been written between 1453 and 1460. The story of the play is extant in a work by Albert le Grand copied from a manuscript ‘originally written in Latin by a certain Maurice, “vicaire” of the church of Cléder in Northern Brittany and was, he says, faithfully transcribed for him by Sebastien, marquis de Rosmadec, comte de la Chappelle, baron de Molac’.12 Five folios are missing from the beginning of the play manuscript. From fol. 5r, a further four folios from a torn exemplar leave only fragments of text, and two further folios are missing from the end of the play, bringing it to an abrupt end. Thus, the beginning, the section of four torn folios and the end of the play can only be conjectured from the existing story of Kea’s life.13 Even though most stage directions in the play are consistent with others so far examined in this work, there are some conceptual anomalies of the kind outlined in the Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek.14 The tyrant, Teudar, demands to know of St Kea where his God was before anything ‘was’, and, before St Kea replies, a comment in the form of a stage direction states: ‘Pyth esa Du kyns bos neb tra?’ (Where was God before anything existed?).15 This question summarises and explains the previous Teudar stanza and does not refer to any action. Another apparent stage direction is also presented as a comment and explanation of what is happening in the narrative in the way that an expositor might explain the detail to an audience. However, it is not clear to whom the apparent stage direction is addressed:
Mar tue Teudar Ke latha, ef a’n kef war e forth hyr.
[If Teudar happens to kill Kea, he will suffer for it in the long run.]16
This explanation appears to be unnecessary, for it simply repeats that which St Kea says in the text immediately before the stage direction: ‘te a’n kef war the forth hyr’ (you will suffer for it in the long run). It might appear that the so-called stage direction offers an option to Teudar to kill Kea, but a more likely explanation is one where the stage direction simply iterates Kea’s agonised warning of what will happen to Teudar if he continues to torture him (Kea). Even so, it remains unclear to whom this comment is addressed or why it is specifically included. A similar mystifying stage direction occurs a few lines later when the Fourth Torturer says: ‘Indeed without doubt,/ that is a well-known saying and I say now:/the like has happened to us’. The stage direction says: ‘Rag dader telys, henna ew lavar kymmyn’ (Paid for goodness, that is a common saying).17 Again, this repetition by the so-called stage direction adds nothing to the meaning of the text or its value as a record. Like the previous stage direction, this one appears as a comment upon a statement in the text and may not even warrant designation as a stage direction. This comment, presented in the form of a stage direction, perhaps indicates the infancy of the concept of the stage direction. Its intention either appears to be concerned with creating added clarification of and agreement with the narrative or explanation of the previous statement or stanza.18
Immediately after the section of the play containing the torn passages, two stage directions again refer to Kea’s torture: ‘iij dans Ke terris’ (Kea’s three teeth broken) and ‘Pen Ke a ve terrys bys i’n grogan’ (Kea’s head was broken into the skull).19 Both these stage directions confirm the beating given to Kea by Teudar’s torturers. The first direction is written in the present tense, while the second one exists in the past tense. The breaking of Kea’s teeth is an incident recorded in Le Grand’s Life of St. Kea, whereas the breaking of Kea’s skull is not specifically recorded. A full translation of The Life occurs in Gilbert H. Doble’s The Saints of Cornwall, Part Three: Saints of the Fal and its Neighborhood, and summaries appear in Linda Gowans’s ‘St. Ké: A Reluctant Arthurian’ and Thomas and Williams’s Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea.20 The breaking of the teeth in The Life is conducted by Theodoric and not Teudar or his torturers, as recorded in the play. The damage done to Kea’s teeth is critical to the narrative of the play, for a stage direction records: ‘Ke a rug fentan gans e lorgh in Keliaw Soor’ (St Kea made a spring with his staff in Keliaw Soor).21 In The Life, the spring becomes ‘the resort of local sufferers of toothache’.22 Presently, in the play, St Kea enters with a leper, and the remarkable properties of the spring are recorded in another stage direction: ‘Keladocus hic lavet vel aspergat leprosum aqua’ (Here St Kea is to wash or sprinkle the leper with the water).23 Thus, the leper is cured by water from the spring and, by way of an expression of gratitude, a note of explanation, for it can hardly be called a stage direction, records that ‘fentan Kylyow Raw. pedyr eraw dyer. Leper a ros the Ke an fentan Chy Soor ha peder eraw dyer’ (the well of Kylyow Raw. four acres of land. A leper gave St Kea the well of Chy Soor and four acres of land).24 Like the two previously cited so-called stage directions, this one similarly offers contextual information but does not refer to the action of the play. A further comment is now offered in the manuscript by way of explanation of the significance of the spring: ‘Iste fons vocatur Fons Kaladoci et est apud Keliow Soor. In eodem clausum vocatur Park Ke usque in hodiernum diem’ (This spring is called St Kea’s well and it is in Kellyow Soor. The enclosed field in the same place is called Kea’s Field to this very day).25 Clearly, the story of St Kea as related in The Life and other summaries can only offer broad sources of information that may be incorporated in stage directions. The fidelity of the stage direction content to its source material can only go into as much detail as the basic generality of the story will permit.
Close Adherence to Narrative Sources
Tighter correspondence to source material, in this case the biblical narrative, is recorded in the Ordinale de Resurrexione Domini Nostri Jhesu Christi of the Cornish Ordinalia during the episode concerning the disciples’ walk to Emmaus. A stage direction records:
cleophas et socius ambulant in platea
[Cleophas and his companion walk in the place.]26
This stage direction, like others, simply records action that has occurred in a previous performance and determines that this is what happens at this point in the play. Although walking around the ‘place’ is a regular convention in all the Cornish plays, there is some added appropriateness in this case as the narrative itself determines that the disciples are walking to Emmaus.27 Motivation for the convention of walking around the place is not always governed by narrative conditions. It is a practice most frequently used independently of narrative requirements to introduce personages, promote a ‘boast’ or fill in time.28 Rather like the stage direction anomalies referred to in the play of St Kea, there is a similarly ambiguously recorded statement presented in the margin of the Ordinale de Resurrexione Domini MS that is effectively a line of dialogue but presented as an extraneous question: ‘tu peregrinus es’ (Art thou a stranger?) (l. 1260). This line exists within the textual column and extends beyond it towards the right of the text.29 The line should be presented as a regular line of dialogue that precedes Cleophas’s statement, ‘If thou are not a stranger,/ It is idle for thee to ask/What is the wonder which has occurred’. A similarly ambiguous line occurs at l. 1320 that does not appear as a stage direction: ‘Did not our heart burn within us in the way?’ The line extends into the right-hand margin beyond the text and is written in the same hand as the text.30 Immediately after this question, Cleophas says: ‘Ah! was not within us/Our heart burning?’ So, this extraneous line in the form of a question, like the previous one at l. 1260, should be written as lines of text spoken, respectively, by Cleophas and the Companion (Luke). The extension of these lines beyond the normal body of the text appears to exist as a scribal error. It seems that the scribe left out these lines and inserted them as corrections where space was available. This is a not uncommon practice where stage directions have been previously omitted and subsequently squeezed into available space.
In Chapter 3, I presented evidence for the dress of the pilgrim as recorded in a stage direction in the Chester Saddlers play of Emmaus (Play 19) and the Towneley play of the Pilgrims (Play 27). Two of Jesus’s disciples, Cleophas and Luke, are encountered on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus, in the disguise of a pilgrim, joins them. The disciples do not recognise him. The biblical source of this evidence is contained in Mark 16:12 and is less precise in describing Jesus’s appearance. The Vulgate records: ‘Post haec autem duobus ex eis ambulantibus ostensus est in alia effigie, euntibus in villam’ (And after that he appeared in another shape to two of them walking, as they were going into the country).31 The Coverdale Bible offers: ‘After warde as two of them were walkynge, he shewed himself vnder another figure, whan they were goynge vpon the felde’.32 Neither of these versions, ‘in another shape’ and ‘vnder another figure’, refer to Jesus being dressed as a pilgrim. However, the version of this part of the biblical narrative is repeated in Luke’s Gospel at 24:18 and reads in the Vulgate as ‘Et respondens unus cui nomen Cleopas dixit ei, “Tu solus peregrinus es in Hierusalem et non cognovisti quae facta sunt in illa his diebus?” ’ (And the one of them whose name was Cleopas answering said to him: ‘Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things that have been done there in these days?’).33 Thus, meaning of the Latin peregrinus as a stranger, foreigner or traveller has been converted in the Chester and Towneley Plays into the identity of a ‘pilgrim’. The biblical references do not permit Cleophas and Luke to recognise Jesus, and the same is the case in the Chester and Towneley Plays. The pilgrim’s dress is intended to alert the audience to Jesus’s disguised identity but not so to the disciples.34 In theatrical terms, this is a classic example of the audience knowing something of significance that selected personages in the play do not know, or, as Bertrand Evans refers to it, ‘discrepant awareness’:
My first concern […] has been to present a faithful account of the dramatist’s means and ends in the creation, maintenance, and exploitation of differences in the awarenesses of participants and of differences between participants’ awarenesses and ours as audience.35
Two further Chester stage directions develop the story by saying: ‘Tunc frangit panem et dicat:’ (Then he shall break the bread and he is to say) and ‘Tunc Jesus evanescit’ (Then Jesus vanishes).36 Having arrived at Emmaus, Jesus and the two disciples sit down to eat, and it is Jesus’s behaviour in breaking bread that gives away his identity, which is, of course, reminiscent of his responses at the Last Supper. Luke describes this moment in the Vulgate as ‘Et aperti sunt oculi eorum, et cognoverunt eum; et ipse evanuit ex oculis eorum’ (And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight).37 The story develops in the Chester play with a series of stage directions:
Tunc ibunt ad alios discipulos in alio loco congregatos.
[Then they shall go to the other disciples assembled together in another place.]
Tunc omnes eunt infra castrum, et veniet Jesus stans in medio discipulorum; et postea dicat:
[Then they shall all go within the hall (village?), and Jesus shall come, standing in the midst of his disciples; and then he is to say.
Tunc commedit Jesus, et dabit discipulis suis.
[Then Jesus eats, and shall give (food) to his disciples.]
Tunc evanescit Jesus, et ibunt discipuli Bethaniae; et obviantes Thomas [Thome] dicat Petrus.
[Then Jesus vanishes, and the disciples shall go to Bethany; and, meeting Thomas, Peter is to say.]38
Jesus again gives himself away by eating and speaking with all the disciples only to disappear again. The moment is recorded by a stage direction in the Towneley play of the Pilgrims (Play 27):
Tunc recumbent, et sedebit Iesus in medio eorum; tunc benedicet Iesus panem et franget in tribus partibus, et postea euanebit ab oculis eorum; et dicet Lucas
[Then they shall sit and Jesus shall sit in between them. Then Jesus shall bless the bread and shall break it into three pieces, and afterwards vanish from their sight; and Luke shall say]39
On his reappearance in the Chester Saddlers play of Emmaus, Jesus urges Thomas to feel his wounds: ‘put in thy hand; thou ne lett. My woundes are yett freshe and wett as the first were’. A stage direction records ‘Tunc emittet manum in latus et vulnera’ (Then he shall reach out his hand into the side and the wounds).40 John describes the moment in the Vulgate: ‘Deinde dicit Thomae, “Infer digitum tuum huc, et vide manus meas, et adfer manum tuam, et mitte in latus meum; et noli esse incredulus sed fidelis” ’ (Then he saith to Thomas, ‘Put in thy finger hither and see my hands, and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless but believing’).41 Luke elaborates: ‘Videte manus meas et pedes, quia ego ipse sum. Palpate, et videte, quia spiritus carnem et ossa non habet, sicut me videtis habere’ (See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have).42 From a theatrical standpoint, the important focus in the story is that Jesus vanished ‘from their sight’. Under didactic theatrical conditions, Jesus does not need to vanish as if through an instantaneous trapdoor, he simply needs to slip away out of focus and/or out of sight. Of course, vanishing ‘from their sight’ in the case of the Chester play, played on a pageant carriage, could have been a relatively quick action. Again, in theatrical terms, the importance of this moment is one established and developed by the disciples’ responses to his disappearance as observed by an observer. As is often the case with appearances or disappearances of Jesus in these plays, it is the responses of other personages that contextualise the significance of what Jesus does or does not do. Theatrically speaking, Jesus needs to do very little, for the story and other personages will do the work for him.43 This is particularly so in the trial before Annas and Cayphas. In the Passion Play 2, Herod; The Trial before Annas and Cayphas of the N.town plays, a stage direction records:
What tyme þat processyon is enteryd into þe place and þe Herowdys takyn his schaffalde, and Pylat, and Annas and Cayphas here schaffaldys also, þan [xal] come þer an exposytour in doctorys wede, þus seyng:44
The expositor, Contemplacio, establishes the scene to be played as a continuation of the play that was played before the present audience ‘last ȝere’. Before Jesus is brought in front of Annas and Cayphas, a messenger arrives announcing the arrest of Jesus:
Here xal a massanger com into þe place rennyng and criyng, ‘Tydyngs! Tydngys!’, and so rownd abowth þe place, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is take! Jesus of Nazareth is take!’, and forthwith helyng þe prynces, þus seyng:45
As the interrogation proceeds, a stage direction determines that the Primus Judeus ‘Here he xal smyte Jesus on þe cheke’. Then another stage direction records:
Here þei xal bete Jesus about þe hed and þe body, and spyttyn in his face, and pullyn hym down, and settyn hym on a stol, and castyn a cloth ouyr his face; and þe fyrst xal seyn:46
And the final stage direction in this sequence reads: ‘Et percuciet caput’ (And he shall hit him on the head). These four stage directions are derived from the Vulgate:
Et viri qui tenebant illum inludebant ei caedentes. Et velaverunt eum et percutiebant faciem eius, et interrogabant eum, dicentes, ‘Prophetiza: quis est qui te percussit
[And the men that held him mocked him and struck him. And they blindfolded him and smote his face, and they asked him saying, ‘Prophesy: who is it that struck thee?’]47
Three of the four Jews torture the blindfolded Jesus by striking him on the head and they mock him as a prophet, calling him to ‘prophesy’ which among them struck him. Cruel as this treatment is, it evokes comparison with a non-violent medieval children’s game known as Abobbed.48 The Primus Judeus says: ‘A, felawys, beware what ȝe do to þis man,/For he prophecye weyl kan’. The Secundus Judeus adds: ‘þat xal be asayd be þis batte [blow]./What, þu Jesus, ho ȝaff þe þat?’ And the third Judeus strikes a third blow: ‘Whar, whar! Now wole I/ Wetyn how he can prophecy—/Ho was þat?’ The action of Abobbed requires the blindfolded person to be stationary, or relatively so, in order to receive the strikes. In Abobbed, the blindfolded person is required to identify and name the person who last struck him/her with a soft-padded object.49
Closer Adherence to the Biblical Narrative
Why do some stage directions, written in Latin or English, follow the biblical narrative so closely as to be almost indistinguishable from it? The principal reason must be to provide authority and/or religious truth to the observed action. This adherence to the biblical narrative may be witnessed as didactic intention by the play’s instigators and a demonstration of the understanding displayed through the observer’s function of recording what happened. The closeness of the dramatic text to the biblical narrative is nowhere better demonstrated than in the plays of Isaac and Jacob in the Towneley Plays. I have previously published extensive analyses of this relationship and, for the purpose of this volume, I shall summarise some of the analysis and develop it.50
The play of Iacob (Play 6) is composed of 142 lines of text of which 102 may be precisely attributed to the Bible. The play of Isaac (Play 5) consists of 70 lines, with 49 of those directly attributable to the Bible. The play appears to exist as the fragment of a longer play which is presented as a distinct play in the Towneley MS. Two leaves are missing from the Towneley MS between folios 15v and 16r that seemingly contained the beginning of the play of Isaac and the end of the previous play of Abraham. The play of Iacob, although a short play of 142 lines, appears to be complete in respect of its composition and adherence to the biblical narrative. The play of Isaac deals with parts of the biblical narrative contained in Genesis 27:18–28:2, and the play of Iacob draws its content from Genesis 28:10–33:4. All the stage directions in both plays are written in Latin. There are only two stage directions in the play of Isaac and they are of the simple kind: ‘Recedet Iacob’ and ‘Et osculatur’.51 There are six stage directions in the play of Iacob and they each, the last one excepted, owe their source to the Vulgate:
l. 34: Hic [Iacob] vigilet
[Here he (Jacob) is to wake]
Vulgate, Genesis, 28:16: ‘Cumque evigilasset Iacob de somno’
[And when Jacob awaked out of sleep.]
l. 58: ‘Hic egrediatur Iacob de Aran in terram natiuitatis sue’
[Here Jacob is to go out from Harran into the land of his birth.]
Vulgate, Genesis, 31:13: ‘Nunc ergo surge, et egredere de terra hac, revertens in terram nativitatis tuae’
[Now therefore arise, and go out of this land, and return into thy native country.]
l. 84: ‘Hic scrutetur superlectile, et luctetur angelus cum eo’
[Here he is to examine their possessions/baggage and an angel is to struggle with him.]
Vulgate, Genesis, 32:23–24: ‘Transductisque omnibus quae ad se pertinebant, remansit solus, et ecce: vir luctabatur cum eo usque mane’
[And when all things were brought over that belonged to him, he remained alone, and behold: a man wrestled with him till the morning.]
l. 114: ‘Hic diuidit turmas in tres partes’
[Here he divides his company into three parts.]
Vulgate, Genesis, 33.1–2: ‘divisitque filios Liae et Rahel ambarumque famularum. Et posuit utramque ancillam et liberos earum in principio Liam vero et filios eius in secundo loco Rahel autem et Ioseph novissimos’
[He divided the children of Leah and of Rachel and of the two handmaids. And he put both the handmaids and their children foremost and Leah and her children in the second place and Rachel and Joseph last.]
l. 122: ‘Et vadat Iacob osculand[o] Esaw; venit Iacob, flectit genua exorando Deum, et leuando, occurrit illi Esaw in amplexibus’
[And Jacob goes to embrace Esau: Jacob comes, goes down on his knees praying to God, and rising he runs into the arms of Esau.]
Vulgate, Genesis, 33:4: ‘Currens itaque Esau obviam fratri suo amplexatus est eum, stringensque collum et osculans, flevit’
[Then Esau ran to meet his brother and embraced him and, clasping him fast about the neck and kissing him, wept.]
l. 130: ‘[Esaw] dicit seruis suis’
[He says to his servants]52
I have analysed these stage directions before and incorporated understanding of the purpose and value of stage directions as records. However, the starting point for analysis on this occasion has a more concentrated focus upon the condition that these stage directions consist of records of earlier productions and not directions or instructions to intended players. Here, the conformity between the Vulgate and the stage-direction content is almost complete. Four out of the six stage directions begin with the word ‘Hic’ (here). This is not an unusual way for stage directions to record the instigation of action. The term frequently alternates with the word ‘Tunc’ (then). Both words are used to record the need for a response that happens at this point. Had these records been constructed to instruct the player, then their requirement might have been one for immediacy or instantaneousness and might have functioned as a cue. However, what takes place here is something that has happened previously in performance and is concerned with position. Translation of these Latin stage directions can almost be exchanged with translation of the original Vulgate source. They are close in their content and expression. Such closeness clearly arises out of conscious didactic purpose.
Just as the first of these stage directions (l. 34) simply records Jacob’s awakening, so does the second direction (l. 58) record instigation of Jacob’s movement from Aran (Harran) to Canaan (‘the land of his birth’). What this means in staging terms is not clear, for the details of the performance space are not known. Whoever was responsible for the incorporation of this stage direction in the MS clearly witnessed this movement between locations that represented Aran and Canaan and recognised the point of insertion into the written text.
The third of these stage directions (l. 84) records that, ‘Hic scrutetur superlectile, et luctetur angelus cum eo’ (Here he shall examine their possessions and an angel shall struggle with him). In the Towneley text, immediately after the stage direction at l. 85, Deus says: ‘The day spryngys; now lett me go’. And Iacob replies: ‘Nay, nay, I will not so’. In the play, the struggle, during Jacob’s sleep, is between an angel and Jacob. In the Vulgate, the wrestle takes place between Jacob and ‘a man’. St Augustine, in his De Civitate Dei, clarifies the apparent inconsistency between Jacob’s wrestling partner and himself:
Iacob was also called Israel (as I said before) which name his progenie bore after him. This name, the Angell that wrastled with him as hee returned from Mesopotamia, gaue him, being an euident type of Christ. For whereas Iacob preuailed against him, by (a) his owne consent, to forme this mysterie, is signified the passion of Christ, wherein the Iewes seemed to preuaile against him. And yet Iacob gotte a blessing from him whom he had ouer-come: and the changing of his name was that blessing.53
For theatrical purposes, a clear commitment and statement need to be made towards the embodiment and portrayal of the personage who wrestles with Iacob. The stage direction determines that it is an angel, and this was presumably what an audience witnessed and was intended to witness.
These Towneley stage directions record examples of some of the most closely adhered content to equivalent material in the Vulgate. Effectively, they record use of the Bible ‘on stage’. The disparaging remarks highlighted at the start of this chapter, in respect of the Towneley Plays but relevant to other plays and cycles, only serve to illustrate something of the misjudged opinions of scholars based upon unacknowledged theatrical criteria of their own time that completely miss the didactic purpose of such adherence.
Notes
1. Bernhard Ten Brink, History of English Literature, trans. by Horace M. Kennedy, Alois Brandl, Wm. Clarke Robinson, L. Dora Schmitz, 3 vols (London: George Bell, 1883–96), II (1893), p. 244; The Towneley Plays, ed. by George England and Alfred W. Pollard, The Early English Text Society, ES 71 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1897), p. xxix; John Gardner, The Construction of the Wakefield Cycle (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), pp. 66, 71; A. P. Rossiter, English Drama from Early Times to the Elizabethans: Its Background, Origins and Developments (London: Hutchinson, 1950), p. 66; Hardin Craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 221; Dionysius Lardner, The Cabinet Cyclopædia, Biography, Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Great Britain and Ireland, 10 vols in 133 vols (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1836), I, p. 281; Allardyce Nicoll, World Drama (London: Harrap, 1949), p. 151; Thurstan C. Peter, The Old Cornish Drama (London: Elliot Stock, 1906), p. 18.
2. See Craig, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages, p. 4.
3. Eleanor Prosser, Drama and Religion in the English Mystery Plays: A Re-evaluation, Stanford Studies in Language and Literature, 23 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 45. See also Alan S. Downer, ‘The Tudor Actor: A Taste of his Quality’, Theatre Notebook, 5.4 (1951), 76–81 (p. 76): ‘Most of the evidence must be deduced from the texts of the plays themselves, and here the student confronts the danger of reading into the play techniques of which the original author was not aware’.
4. Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama, pp. 84–86; The Vulgate Bible Douay-Rheims Translation, The Pentateuch, ed. by Edgar Swift, 6 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), I, Genesis 8:6–12.
5. Coverdale, Biblia the Byble, The i. boke of Moses [Genesis], Chapter 8, sig. aiiiir.
6. Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama, p. 85; modern directors often agonise unnecessarily over the means by which both the raven and the dove should be articulated. As long as the artificiality of the mechanism is made clear, the didactic purpose and value will be transmitted.
7. See Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 464; II, p. 377 for a similar discrepancy between the Vulgate and the play text. A further forty-seven lines of this scene are produced from the H manuscript that are not contained in the Hm manuscript: ‘Only York 9/226 shares Chester’s explanation of the raven’s failure to return. Wakefield [Towneley] 3/501–4, Ludus Coventriae [N.town] 2/246 and Cornish Ordinalia p. 31 follow a common explanation in the commentaries, that the raven has settled on the carcasses floating in the water’.
8. Harris, The Life of Meriasek, p. 2; Combellack-Harris, ‘A Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek’, pp. 20–25;
9. Stokes, Beunans Meriasek: The Life of St. Meriasek, p. 225.
10. Myrna Combellack-Harris, in her 1985 PhD thesis, ‘A Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek’, has identified three main scribes with a possible fourth: ‘Scribe A wrote the main body of the text […] Scribe B wrote the first ten pages […] Scribe C attempted to use the ms. as a working copy for production […] Scribe D The most challenging problem is the matter of who wrote the sentence, pax vos omnes nos summus melyores vyrgilius (ms. p. 71)’: Combellack-Harris, ‘A Critical Edition of Beunans Meriasek’, pp. 105–06. See the Prelude, n. 16, in this work.
11. For examples, see the Chester Saddlers Playe of Emmaus (Play 19), the Taylors Playe of the Ascension (Play 20) and the Fishmongers Playe of Pentecost (Play 21) in Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, I, pp. 360, 369, 379, 383, 391, 392–94.
12. Albert le Grand, La vie Gestes, Mort, et Miracles, Des Saincts de la Bretaigne Armoriqve (Nantes: Pierre Doriov, 1637). Subsequent editions were reprinted under slightly revised titles in 1659, 1680, 1837 and 1901; Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, p. xi.
13. See Linda Gowans, ‘St. Ké: A Reluctant Arthurian?’, Folklore 101.2 (1990), 185–97, for a summary of the life of St Kea; see also Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. xi–xiv.
14. Stage directions are predominantly written in the present tense, but the following are written in the past tense: Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 76, 83, 112. See the Prelude, n. 30, in this work.
15. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, p. 16.
16. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, p. 58.
17. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 78–79.
18. See stage directions at ll. 600 and 1098: the stage direction at l. 600 states ‘a’y stat a Callan arghebscob’ (of his state, archbishop of Colan), which labels the content of the previous speech; the stage direction at l. 1098, ‘Tyrant broke Kea’s three teeth’, explains the content of the previous speech by St Kea. See also Alan J. Fletcher, ‘The Staging of the Middle Cornish Play Bewnans Ke (“The Life of St Kea”)’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 43 (2013), pp. 156–73: in this work, Fletcher discusses the scribal layering of the manuscript together with an analysis of the functions of stage directions as they affect the nature of the play’s staging. He categorises the stage directions into ‘types’: ‘They have a broadly classifiable range of functions, and a working taxonomy suggests six essential stage direction types’ (p. 164). His analysis of the stage directions is based on the assumption that the directions are instructions directed towards subsequent action by the player: he considers actions that ‘specifically call for movement’ (p. 164), ‘call for a character to display himself’ (pp. 166–67), ‘tell a character to act “in a tyrant’s fashion” (p. 167), telling him (the player) simply to act in some traditional pomping manner’ (p. 167), ‘call for movement of some sort’ (p. 169) or ‘specify some particular physical action’ (pp. 165, 169). The italics in these examples are mine. Clearly, Fletcher’s orientation is one that regards these stage directions as fulfilling the kind of functions demanded by modern stage directions that are directed towards players and their subsequent action.
19. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 74–75, 76–77.
20. Gilbert H. Doble, The Saints of Cornwall, Part Three: Saints of the Fal and its Neighborhood, The Dean and Chapter of Truro (Oxford: Holywell Press, 1964), pp. 89–104; Gowans, ‘St. Ké: A Reluctant Arthurian’, 185–86; Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. xii–xiv.
21. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 82–83.
22. Gowans, ‘St. Ké: A Reluctant Arthurian’, p. 185.
23. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 84–85; Doble, Saints of Cornwall, Part III, p. 90: ‘ “The Shore of S, Ké,” where, as his disciples were thirsty, he struck a rock which happened to be there and caused water to come forth from it in abundance, and [to this day] the sick, drinking this water with faith, recover their health by the merits of S. Ké’.
24. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 84–85.
25. Thomas and Williams, Bewnans Ke The Life of St Kea, pp. 86–87.
26. Norris, Cornish Ordinalia, II, p. 95; Edwin Norris, in his edition of the Cornish Ordinalia, Vol 1, states: ‘The manuscript has been altered in a few passages by a subsequent possessor, who has also inserted some stage directions here and there […] The stage directions of the subsequent possessor are printed between brackets (see p. 4), and where they are obviously wrong, no translation is given (see p. 17)’. Norris invariably translates the words ‘in platea’ as ‘on the stage’. Given that the extant theatres-in-the-round at Perran Round and St Just consist of playing levels that are lower than those of the standing or sitting spectators, the inference that other such playing places in Cornwall consisted of the same spatial arrangement may legitimately refer to players playing ‘in’ the playing place. Playing ‘on the stage’ implies action on a raised level.
27. See Chapter 6, n. 6, in this work.
28. See Chapter 5 in this work.
29. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 791, fol. 69r; Luke 24:18.
30. MS Bodley 791, fol. 69v.
31. Kinney, The Vulgate Bible, Mark 16:12.
32. Coverdale, Biblia the Bible, The Gospell of S. Marke, 16:12.
33. Kinney, The Vulgate Bible, Luke 24:18.
34. For a full discussion of this issue, see Beadle, The York Plays, II, pp. 387–88.
35. Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare’s Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. viii–ix; See Pfister, The Theory and Analysis of Drama, on ‘Discrepant Awareness’, pp. 49–55. See also Chapter 7, n. 1, in this work.
36. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 361. See Chapter 6, n. 83, in this work for further consideration of this stage direction.
37. Kinney, The Vulgate Bible, Luke 24:31.
38. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, pp. 362–66.
39. Stevens and Cawley, Towneley Plays, p. 364.
40. Lumiansky and Mills, Chester Mystery Cycle, I, p. 367.
41. Kinney, The Vulgate Bible, John 20:27.
42. Kinney, The Vulgate Bible, Luke 24:39.
43. In the various productions of medieval plays that I have directed that contain the part of Jesus, players of Jesus have frequently been anxious in their attempts to understand why they are required to do certain actions or behave in unclear or unmotivated ways. Brought up in a modern Stanislavskian, or Stanislavskian-derived, culture of performing, they clearly need to know ‘why’ they are required to behave in a particular manner. Most often, the story will not allow an answer to be known or, at best, the answer will be ambiguous. Thus, the player feels unsatisfied and theatrically empty, and attempts have to be made to explain to the player why this condition is so. Understanding of didactic purpose can help, but modern-day players are deeply and unconsciously affected by post-Stanislavskian culture; for further consideration of the action of ‘vanishing’ in later plays, see Dessen and Thomson, A Dictionary of Stage Directions 1580–1642, p. 242.
44. Spector, The N-Town Play, I, p. 295. See n. 93 in Chapter 3 of this work.
45. Spector, The N-Town Play, I, p. 299.
46. Spector, The N-Town Play, I, pp. 301, 302.
47. Kinney, Vulgate, Luke, 22.63–64.
48. MED ppl. as n. Abobbed: ‘The game of blind-man’s buff’. However, the MED examples used to illustrate the meaning of Abobbed refer to the game of Hot Cockles and not Blind Man’s Buff. Hot Cockles was a later name used to describe Abobbed. See Sir Philip Sydney, The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia (London: William Ponsonbie, 1593), sig. V4r: ‘As for the rest, howe shepeheardes spend their daies,/At blowe point, hotcocles, or els at keeles’: MED keile: ‘the game of skittles’; OED Online kayles: a. ‘The set of pins of wood or bone used in a kind of ninepins or skittles; more frequently, the game played with these’; see also The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed. by Alice Bertha Gomme, 2 vols (London: David Nutt, 1894, 1898), I, pp. 37, 223, 229–33; Iona and Peter Opie, Children’s Games in Street and Playground (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; rpr. 1970), p. 293.
49. I offered an analysis of this game and its relation to medieval play structures at the Medieval English Theatre meeting in 2020 with the title: ‘If your Bob doesn’t give our Bob that Bob that your Bob owes our Bob then our Bob’ll give your Bob a Bob on’t nose: The Game of Abobbed’. A developed version of this paper with the title ‘ “That gam me thoght was good!”: Structuring Games into Medieval Plays’, Medieval English Theatre, 43 (2022), 191–223.
50. See my publications: ‘Stage Directions in the Towneley Play of Jacob’, The National Arts Education Archive Occasional Papers in the Arts and Education, 5 vols (5–9) (1996), VI, 1–8 (7); Staging Conventions in Medieval English Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 4–13, 181; ‘The Bible and the Towneley Plays of Isaac and Iacob’ in Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350–1600, ed. by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Leiden: Brill/Rodopi, 2016), pp. 92–124. There is some repetition in these articles and chronological improvements in accuracy, the latest item being the most accurate.
51. Stevens and Cawley, Towneley Plays, pp. 58, 59.
52. Stevens and Cawley, Towneley Plays, pp. 61, 62, 63; Edgar, Vulgate, Genesis, 28:16, 31:13, 32:23–24, 33:1–2, 33:4.
53. St Avgvstine, of the Citie of God with the learned comments of Io. Lod. Vives, trans. by John Healey (London: George Eld, 1610), pp. 613–14.