Biblical Drama under the Tudors 9783111392745, 9783111030241

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BIBLICAL DRAMA UNDER THE TUDORS by

RUTH H BLACKBURN

d 197 1

MOUTON THE H A G U E · P A R I S

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 70 - 106467

Printed in The Netheilands by Mouton &, Co., Printers, The Hague.

To my father and to the memory of my dear mother

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Alfred Harbage, under whose guidance I first explored Biblical plays written in the Tudor period, and Professor William Nelson and Professor Henry Wells, who encouraged me to continue my study. Professor Marjorie Nicolson's kindness in offering me the Fisher Fellowship enabled me to spend a happy year in Cambridge, England, reading books not available at Columbia. The librarians of Columbia University Library, Cambridge University Library, and the County Library in North Walsham, Norfolk, were unfailing in their courtesy and efficiency. Finally, I offer special thanks to my friends Enid Welsford of Cambridge University and Isabel Rathborne of Hunter College for many valuable suggestions and for their personal interest in the progress of my book. University College, Rutgers University January 29, 1971

RUTH H. BLACKBURN

PREFACE

"Search the scriptures" might well have stood as a motto for the sixteenth century. The Bible had always been the Book of Books for Christendom, but in the Reformation period its significance was enormously heightened by the bitter religious strife of the time. It was not only a sourcebook for theologians, preachers, and moralists, but also an armory of proof-texts for controversialists in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic, sect and sect. On every side it was studied, quoted, disputed, and revered. In England, as on the continent, drama was one of the vehicles through which this intense concern with the Bible was expressed. Between about 1520 and the end of Elizabeth's reign, we know of about fifty new plays based on scriptural stories which were either produced or offered for acting on the English stage. About half of these survive. Although there are gaps in our knowledge, I shall try to discern the phases of development through which the Biblical drama passed, and its relationship to the fortunes of the Reformation. We know, for example, that while the 1520's saw only a handful of Biblical moralities and a political satire based on the book of Esther, the 1530's were remarkable for an impressive number of Biblical plays by Protestant converts, John Bale, Ralph Radcliffe, Nicolas Udall, and others. In the next decade, J (An Christopherson, Nicholas Grimald, and other scholars at English universities experimented with neo-classical plays on Biblical figures in the manner already developed on the continent. Their work, which was in Latin or Greek, had only a limited circulation and was the prelude to an apparent gap in the tradition during

8

PREPACE

most of Edward's years as well as Mary's. Elizabeth's accession was followed by renewed enthusiasm for Biblical drama in schools, in the universities, and on the popular stage. Just as suddenly the fashion disappeared after about 1568, to be revived briefly in the London theatre toward the close of the century. With this limited revival the tradition died, for in the seventeenth century the impulse to dramatize the Bible was much less strong and worked itself out in neo-mysteries and occasional closet plays, quite outside the main development of English drama. Some of these plays have been studied before, but with certain limitations. In tracing the influence of continental drama on early Protestant writers, C. H. Herford 1 touched on some early Biblical plays. Hardin Craig's sketch in his English Religious Drama 2 is brief and tends to accept too readily the research of minor scholars. Bale's work has never been adequately related either to his medieval training or to Protestant apocalyptic. In his account of Biblical university plays, 3 F. S. Boas considers their classical features rather than their relationship to the religious history of the time. Lily B. Campbell, in her Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth Century England,4 does describe most of the Biblical plays, but her arrangement of them in categories, partly according to type and partly according to audience, obscures their historical significance. She is also mistaken, I believe, in claiming Biblical drama as a purely Renaissance form - early Biblical dramas have many medieval features - and in asserting that the primary aim of the "divine dramatists" was to combat the revival of pagan learning. Many of them were, in fact, deeply involved in "pagan learning" and themselves produced secular work. David M. Bevington, in From "Mankind" to Marlowe, 5 has many penetrating comments to make, but his chief interest is in the structure of the plays and the relationship of structure to performance. Moreover, the humanist drama of Grimald, Foxe, and 1

Studies in the Literary Relations of France and Germany (Cambridge, England, 1886). a (Oxford, 1955), pp. 354-389. 3 University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1914). 4 (Cambridge, 1959). 5 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).

PREFACE

9

Christopherson, and the Biblical plays of Lodge, Greene, Peele, and the English comedians were outside the scope of his study. T. W. Craik's The Tudor Interlude: Stage, Costume, and Acting 6 also concentrates on details of production, whereas I am interested in relating the plays to their historical and religious background. For my purpose, Glynne Wickham's masterly Early English Stages 1300 to 1660 7 was especially valuable for his chapters on "Miracle Plays" in Volume 1 and on "Reformation and Renaissance" in Volume 2. However, he mentions few of the Biblical plays I consider and treats none in detail. There still seems room, then, for a study which examines all the Biblical plays of the Tudor period and attempts to see them in the religious, political, and literary context of their time.

•

T

(Leicester, 1958). (London, 1959, 1963).

CONTENTS

Preface

7

I. Backgrounds 1. The Mystery Plays 2. Morality Plays and Allied Forms 3. The Reformers and the Drama

13 13 19 23

II. John Bale: the Prophet-Playwright of the Early Reformation 1. Historical Background 2. Bale's First Period 3. Bale's Second Period

29 29 36 47

III. Other Plays of the Early Reformation Period .

64

1. Bale's Contemporaries 2. Godly Queen Hester IV. English Humanist Drama in Greek and Latin . 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Thomas Watson's Absalom Grimald's Christus Redivivus Grimald's Archipropheta Christopherson's Jephthe Foxe's Christus Triumphans Conclusion

64 70 77 81 88 94 102 106 117

12

CONTENTS

V. Early Elizabethan Biblical Drama 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Introduction 119 King Darius 125 The Cruel Debtor 128 The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene . 131 The Most Virtuous and Godly Susanna . . . . 136 Sapientia Solomonis 142 Abraham's Sacrifice 145 The History of Jacob and Esau 148 Conclusion 154

VI. Biblical Drama by Shakespeare's Contemporaries 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

119

. 155

Introduction 155 A Looking Glass for London and England . . . 161 David and Bethsaba 171 Queen Hester and Proud Haman 182 The Comedy of the Prodigal Son 188 Conclusion 191

Conclusion

192

Bibliography

196

Index

202

I

BACKGROUNDS

1. THE MYSTERY PLAYS

Glynne Wickham reminds us that the words "Reformation" and "Renaissance" may be dangerous. They may deceive us into thinking that the sixteenth century was "a time of far more sharply defined change ... than in fact it was ... "Mystery" and "Morality" plays are assumed to have been replaced by "comedy" and "tragedy", permanent theatres and perspective scenery to have replaced pageant waggons, inn-yards and mansions." 1 In actual fact the mystery plays, the mature fruit of a long period of theatrical development, were influential throughout the sixteenth century. "Once grown to maturity, they commanded allegiance in the theatre long after Henry VIIFs break with Rome and served the drama of Protestant polemic as sturdily as its Roman Catholic predecessor". 2 In the fiftheenth century there had been a dozen or more mystery cycles. 3 In the sixteenth century, those at Preston, York, Lancaster, Chester, Coventry, Lincoln, Norwich, Chelmsford 4 and possibly Worcester and a few other towns - i.e. about two1

Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages 1300 to 1600, Vol. 2 (London, 1963), p. 14. a Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 156. 3 For convenience I use "mystery" for Biblical plays, "miracle" for plays on the lives of saints. This follows common practice but has no especial authority in medieval usage. 4 Chelmsford seems to have been the center of considerable activity early in Elizabeth's reign. The actors performed their plays in other Essex towns and rented out their costumes.

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thirds - continued to be performed, though in some cases intermittently, into the early part of Elizabeth's reign. While political pressure was certainly exerted against the performance of the mysteries - at least in their traditional forms at York in the 60's and at Chester and Wakefield in the 70's, there was never any general proscription of the cycles under any Tudor sovereign. 5 The mystery cycle at Kendal, like the miracle plays in Cornwall, even survived into the seventeenth century, though in the less remote towns the old cycles had by then passed away. In London and other towns of the south Passion plays something like those in France and Germany appear to have been more popular; some of these, too, continued to be played. Wickham concludes (p. 117) that "on grounds of civic pride, financial gain and the spectacular achievement the Miracle plays [i.e. mysteries] commanded the allegiance of the populace to the very end". The medieval plays, then, were powerful enough to survive long enough to influence sixteenth century Biblical 6

There is not space here to deal at length with the reasons for the disappearance of the mysteries. The question is dealt with in Father H. C. Gardiner's Mysteries' End (New Haven, 1946) and more recently in Wickham's Early English Stages, notably in Chapter IV ("Miracle Plays") in Volume I and Chapter II ("Reformation and Renaissance") in Volume II. Gardiner's assertion (p. 72) that it was "the Reformation and it alone, as a principal cause, which killed off the religious stage in England", seems to go too far and to ignore the factor of changes in public taste. His constant identification of the term "the religious stage" with "traditional Catholic Plays" is definitely misleading, for, as the following chapters will show, there was also a considerable body of Protestant religious plays. Wickham quotes Gardiner's statement (p. 72) that "the power which was really working for the ultimate extinction of the religious stage was none other than the Crown itself', working through the Privy Council and through its arm the Queen's Council in the North. Wickham points out that state hostility to the mysteries corresponds to what we know of the destruction of "other artistic manifestations of Catholic doctrine" such as statues and stained glass and might account for the disappearance of most of the play manuscripts. (There is a further account of the disappearance of the mysteries in Chapter VI). Whatever was the cause of the disappearance, it does not alter my view that the cycles lasted long enough to influence deeply a militant Protestant like John Bale, the writers of popular Biblical drama (mostly Protestant), and even the exponents of humanist drama in the classical tongues.

BACKGROUNDS

15

dramatists. For example, the first-generation reformers, rebels though they believed themselves to be, began by rewriting medieval subjects and adapting medieval forms. Bale, for example, seems to have planned a Protestant mystery cycle, Grimald a Protestant Passion play, and Foxe a Protestant Antichrist play. AH three could easily have seen the medieval cycles, Bale at Norwich, Foxe and Grimald at Lincoln. Before going on to discuss their work, it may be well to recall the principal features of the mysteries. The central theme of the cycles is the redemption of man through Christ Incarnate. Rooted in the services and holy days of the Church, the cycles center on the Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrection. While the cycle may begin with the Fall of Lucifer and end with Judgment Day, the focus is on Incarnation and Atonement, and the Old Testament incidents dramatized were chosen because they were believed to have some special significance in relation to Christ's work of salvation. For example, the fall of Adam is shown because Christ was regarded as the "second Adam" whose atoning power would heal the breach between God and man caused by the first sin. The sacrifice of Isaac was a favorite subject because it was thought to prefigure the sacrifice of Christ. The fact that every episode was thus closely related to the grand theme erf salvation, with the telescopic use of history which is more than history, does give unity and depth to the cycles. This effect is reinforced by the frequent comments which point out these relationships. A sort of continuous recapitulation and anticipation goes on. Cain speaks of the lost grace which the second Adam will restore, Abraham's blessing for Melchizedek points forward to the Eucharist, Noah recalls the fail of Lucifer, and Jesus (in the Harrowing of Hell) His own birth, so that one is continually seeing the present in terms of past and future. The Prophet plays are the classic example of this technique, of which Bale was to make effective use. This underlining of the unity of history is only one example of the didacticism which is characteristic of the plays. Every occasion for direct homily is seized upon. Thus Lucifer's fall becomes an occasion for a talk on pride; Mary Magdalene's con-

16

BACKGROUNDS

version suggests repentance; the Resurrection, immortality; Anna and Simeon, prayer; and so on. The Hegge plays are especially notable for dry but earnest and pithy speeches on serious topics. Mors reminds Herod that death comes even to kings; John the Baptist preaches on repentance and the dangers of over-confidence and despair; while Jesus' conversations with the doctors, which in other cycles is merely a display of memory work in His recitation of the Commandments, is here adroitly made to cover five theological points concerning His nature and person. This didactic habit, fused from time to time with Senecan moralizing, continues right through the century and demonstrates the moral earnestness of much Tudor writing. Sometimes the agent of the religious or moral teaching was some kind of commentator - a preacher, prologue, doctor, or presenter, who explained and interpreted the action or even described it if the dramatist felt that he was unable to represent it. Such a presenter was used by Bale in his Protestant Biblical plays and was still a subject for ridicule in Midsummer Night's Dream (V, 1). Often, too, one of the chief characters takes over the task of explanation. In the York plays, for example, God Himself comes forward at the outset to list His attributes and indicate His intentions in history; Noah describes the evil in the world; and Christ expatiates on the necessity of His suffering. Occasionally the wicked characters declare themselves: Satan unfolds his villainy; Pilate boasts of his pomp and power; and Herod proclaims his lust for blood with many swearings "by Mahound", a dignitary his namesake and other unbelievers continue to invoke even in the plays of sophisticated humanists. Such comment and soliloquy pass into general use. Subtler forms of teaching such as political and social satire are much rarer than homily in the cycles, appearing chiefly in the work of the Wakefield Master, who in the Piers Plowman tradition attacks false witnesses, swindlers, slanderers, mean landlords, and crooked lawyers, and mocks at male and female vanity, social climbing, and simony. He was to find fellow satirists in the writers of popular Biblical drama under the Tudors and in the innumerable tract writers of the sixteenth century. Religious con-

BACKGROUNDS

17

troversy is, naturally, not found in medieval drama, and there is little religious satire, except for an occasional liturgical parody, like the Mock Mass in the Digby Magdalene, or a slighting reference to "Master Lollar". When controversy displaced simple doctrinal teaching we find that satirical elements became enlarged into abuse and polemic. Liturgical parodies are sometimes found in Protestant plays. In a more important way some of the mystery writers prepared the way for dramatic satire. It was natural to them to present their characters as everyday people and to make their actions understandable in terms of contemporary life. There is little attempt at local color or historical objectivity. Cain prodding his stubborn mule is a foul-mouthed north-country yokel, his language brutal, unimaginative, and obscene; Caiaphas in the garments of an English prelate a fighting bishop, like Spencer, who would rather beat up an enemy than reason with him. The audience would feel at home with Adam and Eve spinning and digging, Joseph and Mary in a mild domestic brawl, and the shepherd grumbling at the weather, the crops, and the landlords. Other instances of this striving toward actual life include the functional ship in Mary Magdalene, the nautical talk of "ruff ... ruff, spyer, sprund ... sprot" in the Newcastle Noah play, the real flames and chains in hell, the "chawbone" [jawbone] for Cain and the famous "Rybbe colleryd Red" from which Eve was made. The gruesome tortures in the Crucifixion and St. Erasmus plays, the fanciful attempts at appropriateness in matching guild to subject - the Bakers to the Last Supper, the Goldsmiths to the Magi, the Butchers to the Crucifixion - which seem to us grotesque illustrate the same naïve literalism. Perhaps, though, this presentation of the Biblical narratives through contemporary eyes yielded the most important legacy to the new Biblical dramatists. They made it easy to see Haman as Wolsey, the cruel debtor as a bourgeois social climber, the prodigal son as an Elizabethan schoolboy; they made possible, in fact, a great variety of religious, political, and social satire. Perhaps the medieval drama's greatest significance lay in the feet that it was theatre. It did expose countless communities to

18

BACKGROUNDS

the delight of absorption in dramatic experience Audiences learned to enjoy spectacular effects, to suffer and rejoice with their heroes and heroines, and to appreciate the subtle enhancements of song and music. Some of the spectacular devices of the medieval stage - burning bushes, burning swords, burning worlds, the fall of Lucifer, hell mouth, fountains, and "fyne flowers" springing up - were hardly excelled by the professional companies later. And many scenes in the medieval drama are true theatre. We still feel the pathos in the Abraham plays and the laments of Magdalene and the disciples, horror in the Crucifixion, suspense in the Raising of Lazarus, the Setting of the Watch, and some of the trials. An Aeschylean effect not always marked is the silence of Jesus in the long scene before Herod. The plays about saints (for example the Digby Magdalene) - the long meandering tales, full of vicissitudes and miracles, incredible sufferings and happy endings - join with the Resurrection plays and indeed the whole sweep of the cycles in creating the certainty that though weeping may endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning. The pattern of sin and sorrow turning to joy and redemption buds in the midcentury Susanna and flowers in The Winter's Tale. The use of song often enhances these emotional effects. The Coventry songs are probably the best known and include the charming "As I outrode this enderes night", and the tender "Lully, lulla, Thou littell tyne child" which are still deservedly loved and sung. Sometimes Latin hymns were used, such as "Veni creator spiritus" and "Surge proxime mea columba" (both in the York Plays) and the Te Deum in the Croxton Sacrament and the Digby Magdalene. Other dramas with songs include the Hegge Noah, the Chester Resurrection, the York Coronation of the Virgin, and the Norwich Paradise play, which closed with a male quartet Instrumental music was also common, as stage directions and numerous records of payments to minstrels attest. Bale, Grimald, and other early Protestants continue to use songs and hymns for a variety of effects, much in the manner of their predecessors. One quality of the mysteries apparently died with them, the peculiar charm of unaffected devotion, a simple directness of religious feeling. It is expressed particularly in scenes touched with

BACKGROUNDS

the numinous: God walking in the garden while Adam and Eve hide like frightened children, the shepherds listening to the angels,, the Magi in wonder at the star, and the simple, natural appearance of the Virgin to St. Thomas of India. The spirit of these plays, has seldom been recaptured, certainly not by the early Protestant dramatists. It is not a question of faith or sincerity; Bale and Foxe were men whose passionate convictions led them to risk exile and death; but they could not have written scenes like these even if they had wanted to. They were too busy with argument and citation, attack and defence. A new world was coming into existence, where sects would multiply, loyalities be divided, and change be the only constant. In these winds of controversy something irreplaceable was blown away.

2.

MORALITY PLAYS A N D ALLIED FORMS

In this new world, the medieval morality play was to prove a more adaptable species than the mystery. This was probably because it was by nature a more flexible kind of drama, combining easily with other forms and taking on fresh meanings which would have surprised the pious authors of The Pride of Lije and Everyman. The traditional morality is allegorical in structure in that the external plot represents the inner history of the soul, its moral struggle and final salvation or damnation. It is a product of the same habit of mind that saw, for instance, the progress of the human soul toward God mirrored in the wanderings of Abraham. The protagonist is a universalized type, standing for mankind or human nature, as such names as Humanuni Genus and Everyman indicate. Other generalized types such as Taverner, a Prince, or a Beggar may appear, along with personified abstractions like Lust and Greed, or Mercy and Peace, which are often symmetrically paired. The war between the Vices and the Virtues, the debates of opposites, the coming of Death (together with the machinations of the Vice and Devil) provide the major part of the action. Common to all these plays in one form or another is a basic

20

BACKGROUNDS

plot pattern in which one historian of the form 6 distinguishes five stages: (1) State of Innocence, (2) Temptation and Fall, (3) Life in Sin, (4) Repentance, (5) Pardon. Omissions and variations in this pattern do occur - in Everyman the early stages are left out, whereas The Castle of Perseverance goes through all the stages twice - but in some form it provided the framework of scores of plays. Stock devices recur over and over. Bad characters are disguised as good and vice versa, heroes and heroines are clothed in the garments of evil or innocence, and named and renamed to indicate various stages in their moral progress. Good and bad characters debate and compete, Vices fall out, and Virtues are set in the stocks and have to be rescued by their fellows. Temptation scenes and scaffold repentances recur ad infinitum. Preachers and commentators come forward to point the moral and admonish the audience. Obscenity, invective, and coarse humor cling to the morality throughout its life. Thanks to its flexible character, the morality was easily adapted to the complex needs of the new century. Although it retained its allegorical structure, its types, characters, and abstractions, its debates, disguises, imprisonments and changes of name, the whole machinery - which after all is a basically sound conflict plot was made to serve a variety of needs, educational, political, and social as well as theological and moral. The stock devices are given new meanings. Chastity imprisoned (in the person of Susanna) is rescued from the Vices, not by Mercy but by the Righteous Judge, the Vices in King Darius are given names and personalities appropriate to a heathen court, the debates concern secular as well as doctrinal matters, the pope reveals himself as Antichrist, and the preacher-commentator is more than likely an ardent Protestant.7 6 W. R. Mackenzie, The English Moralities (Boston, 1914), pp. 1-17. It is he who makes the distinction between "abstractions" and "universalized types". 7 Wickham, p. 28, comments on God's Promises that the morality play was "adapted to Protestant purposes in a stream of anti-Catholic polemic interludes... The vitality of this subject matter, a positive contribution of the Reformation drama, can scarcely be stressed too strongly, for it gave to English drama of the time a relevance to daily life".

BACKGROUNDS

21

The allegorical habit of miad, combined with increasingly realistic treatment, produces a great variety of "applications". Everyman himself becomes Magnificence or the Prodigal Son, or the frivolous student Wyt, or Respublica or Ecclesia or a specific repentant sinner such as the Magdalene. Abstractions tend to become professional or class types. Hypocrisy may be a priest or monk, Pride a great prelate, Lechery a prostitute, and the Vice a city gallant. All this facilitates social and political satire. Sometimes a converse process takes place and historical characters are seen as types or abstractions. A traitorous monk in King John's time is Sedition, the elders in the Susanna Story are Sensualitas and Voluptas, and the Pharisees eternal representatives of cant and hypocrisy. Such identifications led people to see direct analogies between past and present, and history sacred and secular was combed for episodes which seemed to typify or prefigure contemporary events. The morality, then, had infinite potentialities which writers of Biblical drama were quick to exploit. Bale, for example, seeing the history of his time as part of an ongoing struggle between Christ and Romish Antichrist, uses in new ways the battle of the Vices and Virtues, the abstractions and types, and the preachercommentator. His successors often combine a straight Bible story with a morality subplot in which abstract figures comment on the main action. This is very cleverly done also in both Godly Queen Hester and The Cruel Debtor, where the abstractions represent aspects of the main characters or problem. Sometimes, as in King Darius, morality features are just thrown in as a makeweight. In the twenties and thirties the devices and tendencies just described crystallized into three main trends, all with some bearing on Biblical drama. There are the evolution of what we may call the "youth play", the appearance of a Biblical political satire in Godly Queen Hester, and Bale's invention of a hybrid form combining morality play and sacred history and intended as Protestant propaganda. Hester and Bale's work will require separate treatment, but the youth play may be briefly treated here. Early in the sixteenth century the salvation-of-Everyman morality

22

BACKGROUNDS

tended more and more to center on sinful and (usually) repentant youth. Interest revolves around the hero's Life in Sin which is comically and realistically treated. In Mundus et Infans (c. 1509), for instance, the hero is shown in childhood, manhood, and old age, but the accent is on his youth, where he appears as a ranter, a bon vivant, a lover of evil companions and the tavern. Interest is drinking, pretty wenches, and purse-stealing is further exploited in Hickscorner (c. 1509-13) from which the author of Youth (c. 1519) borrows low-life scenes, situations, and dialogue. Youth also contains so many overtones from Luke 15 that it almost, if not quite, qualifies as a native attempt at a Prodigal Son Play. Gay, witty, irresponsible, exulting in his strength and joie de vivre. Youth is already a prodigal in expectation, if not in act: I am the heir to all my father's land, And it is come into my hand, And I care for no man.

He plans to spend his money freely, for today "a fellow is not set by / Without he be unthrifty". Ignoring the warnings of Humility and Charity, he succumbs to the charms of Riot, who has just had a lucky escape from the gallows after a spell in Newgate for purse-stealing. This Falstaffian character introduces him to Pride (an estate manager) and "the pretty little niset" Lechery. Only after a comfortable interlude with these jolly friends does Youth cast them off in favor of the Virtues, to begin a new life as Good Contrition. A variation on the youth-repentant theme is John the Evangelist (c. 1520), in which St. John as the preacher-commentator in a series of sermons demonstrates to the vacillating Eugenio the superiority of the contemplative life over the active. Eugenio's activity includes mockery of the church, horse-stealing, gluttony, and lechery. Incidentally, most of the early youth plays make some use of New Testament parables. In Hickscorner, Imagination is won over to the "good" side after reflection on the parable of the Wheat and the Tares, and in Youth the prodigal who wastes his heritage recalls the younger son whose riotous living was forgiven. In John the Evangelist, the third and final sermon which brings

23

BACKGROUNDS

about Eugenio's conversion concerns the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. It is told with a touch of contemporary satire, for the Pharisee, a proud churchman who "standing upright with a pert face", says Mass without ever confessing his own sin. The speaker suggests that there is falseness behind this seeming piety, for the Pharisee "tithed always of the worst" and fasted "from meat and drink ... but not from deadly sin". In criticizing the Publican, he does a double wrong, for he slanders "his even [i.e. fellow] Christian" and in his pride fails to see his neighbor's genuine humility. Though the author is quite orthodox and writing in the tradition of medieval satire, his identification of the Pharisee with a contemporary hypocrite anticipates Bale's attacks on the Catholic clergy. 3.

T H E REFORMERS A N D T H E DRAMA

Meanwhile there was much activity on the continent in the field of Biblical drama. Many humanists, particularly schoolmasters, were experimenting with drama as an educational tool. Using Roman comedies as models, they borrowed the five-act structure, certain characters, and certain devices, such as the omniscient prologue, the messenger who is too out of breath to tell his news, and the appeal for applause at the end of the play. For subject matter they frequently turned to the Bible, hoping to combine classical form with the religious teachings of the Old and New Testaments. The plays were often performed by schoolboys, in Latin or in the vernacular, for the edification of their fellowstudents or the townspeople. 8 These activities occupied humanists irrespective of their religious views. Catholic and Protestant writers alike offered the familiar arguments in favor of their work: that the purpose of art was to teach, to delight, and to move to virtue; that performing plays improved the speech, poise, and fluency of the young performers. For Biblical drama in particular it was argued that since the subject-matter was "true" history in a sense that pagan matter 8

J. G . Robertson, A History (London 1962).

of German

Literature,

rev. E. Purdie

24

BACKGROUNDS

was not, and since it was from Holy Writ, it would confer special moral and spiritual benefits on players and audiences. Some religious writers (Cornelius Crocus, for example) wanted to do away with pagan subject-matter altogether. Few enthusiasts went this far, but certainly a very large number of humanists believed that Biblical plays could be a power for good. Erasmus in particular was widely quoted as saying that it would be a splendid thing if Bible stories were made into plays for young people, who would learn scripture and good morals at the same time, a great deal better than from many sermons. 9 Perhaps it is not so widely recognized that Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin all shared these enthusiastic hopes. Early Protestant enthusiasm for the drama owes a particularly large debt to Luther, whom one historian goes so far as to call "the spiritual author of the Biblical drama". 10 One smiles to think what Gosson or Northbrooke or Geoffrey Fenton would have said if they had realized that, fifty years before their puritanical diatribes were written, the great reformer had entertained Spalatin to a comedy and supper with the players - and on a Sunday, too! Luther commended school performances of Terence, not only because they improved the boys' speech and warned them against vice, but also because comedy is a fine art which mirrors life and depicts all sorts and conditions of men. Luther was not squeamish about "pagan immorality"; he said stoutly that if one could not face a little "obscenity and fornication" in classical authors one had better not read the Bible, either. Like some other early literary critics, he held that the Greeks owed their poetry and drama to the Hebrews. He spoke with admiration of "the lovely poems and plays of the Jews", by which they celebrated their Sabbaths and feast days. They presented such plays, he continued, in order that the people and especially youths should learn "as from a popular preacher to trust God, 9

Joseph E. Gillett, "The German Dramatist of the Sixteenth Century and His Bible", Publications of the Modern Language Association XXXIV (1919), 470 (n). 10 Hugo Holstein, Die Reformation im Spiegelbilde der Dramatischen Litteratur des Sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1886), p. 21.

BACKGROUNDS

25

to live piously, and when threatened by any foe, to cling to God's help and comfort". Indeed, he saw the Bible itself as a great dramatic poem, inspired by the Holy Ghost, who "presents the characters in his play and through them preaches to us". Luther thought the apocryphal books particularly suitable for dramatization, for Judith would make a "fine and valiant tragedy", Tobias a delicate, charming comedy. 11 Luther's comments, though often casually made, were treated with great seriousness, and were quoted, paraphrased, expanded, and commented on in tracts, prologues, prefaces and essays up to the close of the seventeenth century. The injunction to potential dramatists to do their bit was taken as mandatory. Schoolmasters especially were regarded as morally obliged to labor at this task. 12 Both Melanchthon and Calvin were known for the excellence of their classical learning before they became leaders of the Reformation. They shared many of the views of humanist educators. Melanchthon in particular was a strong supporter of classical and neoclassical drama. He admired and edited Terence, and recommended school performances of his plays, not only for their good effects on speech and language, but also because they wrought moral improvements in both actors and audience. He also produced Prodigal Son plays with his students. His influence was sufficiently extensive for his educational precepts to be embodied in the official regulations for schools in Saxony. 13 Stymmellius quoted him in the preface to his Prodigal Son play as late as 1549. Plays were allowed even in Calvin's model theocracy14 and elsewhere in Protestant Switzerland; indeed Theodore Beza, 11

Ibid, p. 20: pp. 21-24. See also Gillett, p. 471. Martin Bucer's De Honestis Ludís, his remarks on the drama in De Regno Christi, quoted at the beginning of Chapter IV, often reflect Luther's views. 13 W. Koch, Melanchthon's Schola Privata (Gotha, 1859), pp. 32, 56. See also Robertson, pp. 158-162. 14 See for example, Percy Scholes, The Puritans and Music (Oxford, 1934), who cites (p. 342) the minutes of the Council which show that the members officially attended Bible plays, at which they were allotted special seats, and also saw a comedy of Terence. The Council paid the actors from a general fund in both cases. la

26

BACKGROUNDS

Calvin's assistant and successor, wrote his Abraham Sacrifiant (ISSO) as a token of his conversion. Sebastian Castellio, who taught school in Geneva until his quarrel with Calvin in 1544, based several of his dialogues for students on Old Testament stories. In 1547 there was a Latin Joseph at Geneva and in 1549 an Antichrist play at Lucerne. Felix Platter's autobiography records performances at Geneva in the Fishmarket, the Cornmarket, and the old Augustinian priory - Hanum, Zacchaeus, The Resurrection, Susanna, and Saul. Some of these do not sound excessively decorous, for Susanna's appearance in a real tin bath tub must have been comic, and Saul's conversion was accompanied by thunder produced by stones in a barrel, and by simulated lightning which, in at least one production, set his breeches on fire, The children of the city also got up their own plays, and Platter himself as Christ sat on a henhouse ladder and threw his cap at St. Paul, hitting him in the eye. 15 It is interesting that at this early stage there seems to have been no hard and fast rule about representing God or Christ on the stage. Luther says only that episodes dealing with Christ should be handled with propriety and sincerity. Christ appears in Kirchmayer's Judas, and Greff shows Him healing the blind man and calling down Zacchaeus from the sycamore tree. Sachs has a charming scene in which God quizzes the children of Adam and Eve on Luther's catechism.16 All these writers were Protestant, yet other Protestant playwrights omit the baptism of Jesus from plays on John the Baptist and even have a messenger to "report" the crucifixion. Of course this may have been practical dramaturgy. The Catholic Macropedius displays a similar hestitation, for though he wrote a play on the boy Jesus among the doctors, he was reluctant to dramatize scenes from His adult life. " With regard to representations of the Passion, there was dis15

Thomas Platters Selbstbiographie 1499-1582 [und\ Das Tagebuch des Felix Platter, ed. G. Boos (Leipsig, 1878), pp. 143-5. 16 Comedie Die Ungleichen Kindern Eve, 1553, quoted in Robertson, pp. 164-65. 17 See the introduction to his Lazarus, 1541.

BACKGROUNDS

27

agreement even among keen advocates of Biblical drama. Though in time both dramaturgic and religious objections to this subject were raised, they do not seem to have been very forceful at first, and there were several Passions written in the classical manner, the best known of which is probably Barptolomaeus* Christus Xylonicus.18 Later, when Aristotle's Poetics became well known, it was feared that a guiltless hero was an inappropriate subject for a tragedy in the classical manner. Religious objections, too, were voiced, for example, by Vives, who disliked the comic treatment of Judas, of the fleeing apostles, and of Peter cutting off the servant's ear. Only Christ was serious, complained Vives, "and Hee is cold even in the divinest matters", to the shame of the priests who produced the play. 19 Melanchthon was equally opposed to Passion plays. He cited the disastrous consequences of a performance at Bahn, where the actor playing Christ was accidentally killed by one of the soldiers, and in falling killed another actor, whose brother revenged himself on the soldier and was then executed. This unlucky chain of events seemed to Melanchthon a proof of divine wrath against improper treatment of profoundly serious events. 2 0 Even Luther, who earlier had spoken favorably of such plays, discouraged the playwright Greff from completing the Passion play he had in mind. He seems on this occasion to have feared the harmful effects of sensation for its own sake, for he writes Greff that Christ's sufferings should not be depicted to gratify a thirst for sensation, but to make men weep over their own sins. He feared that the jeers of the crowd would merely arouse laughter at the wrong moment, Greff finally compromised by writing an Easter play which touched lightly on the events of Good Friday. Greff is a good example of the serious Christian dramatist torn between his awareness of theatrical values and his fear of taking liberties with the sacred text. In his Easter play he keeps Mary and Veronica silent, because the New Testament does not record 18

(Paris, 1529). St. Augustine, of the Citie of God: with The Learned Community of Io. Lod. Vives. Englished by J. H. H[ealey] 1610. 30 Holstein, pp. 25-30. 18

28

BACKGROUNDS

their speeches, and apologizes for the introduction of some extra angels. In his Play of the Three Patriarchs he explains that Isaac is not shown as a youth because the Bible only tells of him as a child and a grown man. Elsewhere Greff took refuge in explanatory marginal comments, or wholesale quotation set beside his imaginary conversations, a practice also employed by Jacob Rueff, and by Zacharias Bletz, the author of the Swiss Antichrist play. 21 Another anxious dramatist, Rebhun, apologized for amplifying the brief New Testament narrative in his Marriage at Cana.22 Tender consciences like these could not fail to have an adverse effect on the creative impulses of the writers, and it is not astonishing that continental Biblical drama is remarkable more for its bulk than for its imaginative and literary qualities. Such then was the state of opinion on Biblical drama on the continent, and particularly in the best Reformed circles. Some doubt was expressed about representing the Passion and the persons of the Trinity on the stage, and about altering the sacred stories. Otherwise, drama in general as an educational and moral force for good was warmly endorsed, and Biblical subject matter in particular was strongly felt to be a divine source of truth, virtue, and spiritual power. These ideas must have soon become familiar in England. It is even possible, though not demonstrable, that such men as Bale and Radcliffe set to work under the impulse of Luther's urging. Certainly Radcliffe's productions of Biblical plays with his students were quite in the tradition of the continental schoolmasters. In the forties and after, when Oxford and Cambridge men took up the challenge, their plays were prefaced by carefully worded apologetic. The Protestant Grimald and the Catholic Christopherson alike echoed their continental fellows in their claims that their work would teach, delight, and move to virtue and would perhaps surpass the work of the ancients because of the special virtues of Biblical subject matter. 21

Gillett, pp. 488-89. Rebhun, as a school teacher in Saxony, had been in personal touch with Luther. See Robertson, p. 160. 22

π JOHN BALE: THE PROPHET-PLAYWRIGHT OF THE EARLY REFORMATION

1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The first Protestant writer of Biblical plays, as far as we know, was John Bale 1 (1495-1563), the most significant dramatist of the thirties and the only Biblical dramatist of the century whose work has survived in any quantity. Born ten years after Richmond won at Bosworth Field (1485) and founded the Tudor dynasty, Bale lived to watch the shifting fortunes of the Reformation under Henry VIII and his successors. Deeply involved in the struggle himself, he frequently skirted danger: he saw friends and fellowworkers burned at the stake, twice fled for his life, survived two precarious exiles, and lived to be a prebend of Canterbury and to die in his bed in the fifth year of Elizabeth. The chief interest of his works lies in the intensity with which they reflect the hopes and frustrations, the actions and reactions, and the interminglings of old and new in those formative decades. Like the times he lived in, Bale's life was full of contradictions and paradoxes. A Carmelite novice at twelve, Bale began his literary career in his teens by compiling information on the lives of Carmelite saints. Converted to Protestantism, he served under Thomas Cromwell, was made a bishop under Edward, and subsequently became the companion in exile of John Foxe, the martyrologist of the Reformation. Yet inevitably he retained many medieval habits of 1

There are three studies of Bale: Jesse W. Harris, John Bale (Urbana, 1940); Honor McCusker, John Bcde: Antiquary (Bryn Mawr, 1941); W. T. Davies, A Bibliography of John Bale in Proceedings and Papers, Oxford Bibliographical Society, V (1936-9), pp. 201-279.

30

JOHN BALE

thought, and we can see clearly how the new convictions which seemed so revolutionary to him were in fact expressed through medieval forms such as morality and mystery plays and through ancient liturgical patterns and traditional categories deriving from Aquinas and Vincent of Beauvais. In addition, belligerent Protestant though he was, Bale did not wholly forsake his old loyalties. He fought hard to prevent the destruction of medieval libraries and was outraged when his efforts failed. If it was his destiny to be a Protestant warrior, Bale was fortunate both in his order and in his college. The friars seem to have had more vitality than most of the other orders, and the Carmelites in particular were noted for their considerable intellectual vigor. The library at their Norwich house, which Bale entered in 1507, was a rich one, "noble and fair", in Bale's words, and it was there that he began that habit of collecting and recording information which was to become a lifetime occupation. Going from Norwich to Cambridge in 1514, he was plunged into one of the most exciting periods the University has ever seen. The impact of humanist learning on Bible teaching was electric. Sir George Stafford's lectures on St. Paul "seemed of a dead man to make him alive again, set forth in his native colors" recalls one student. Croke's lectures in Greek made possible a first-hand study of the Gospels. Erasmus' Novum Testamentum was to the Cambridge liberals what Tyndale's New Testament was soon to be to a wider public. Thomas Bilney, later a leader of the reform movement and the first of the Cambridge martyrs, remembered what Erasmus' translation had meant to him. "At last I heard speak of Jesus even then when the New Testament was first set forth by Erasmus". 2 Into this ferment came the new ideas from Wittenberg, and before long Cranmer, whose residence at Jesus coincided almost exactly with Bale's, was rereading the entire Bible with the issues raised by Luther in mind. The Norwich Carmelites had probably entered their promising young scholar in Jesus College because it was known to be run on strict, almost monastic lines. Yet at Jesus in Bale's time were Thomas Goodrich, 2

John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. The Rev. Stephen Reed Cattley, (London, 1837^1), 8 vols., IV, 635.

JOHN BALE

31

John Edmunds, and Richard Harmon, and of course Cranmer, all of whom became Protestants, besides Geoffrey Downes, who was very sympathetic with the new learning. Early in the twenties students interested in discussing the new doctrines began to meet at the White Horse tavern, jokingly called "little Germany". "Quite probably", writes the historian Rupp, "it was such an informal and open meeting as could include men like Gardiner and Day, where men might stretch their legs and have their talk out in an all-round debate across which fell no shadows of approaching destiny to warn the bright company that some of them, embracing opinions the opposite of those they now maintained, would sit in judgement upon their friends, among whom nearly every figure of note would come at last to the fire". 3 The number of Cambridge men of the day who would be religious leaders of one persuasion or another is impressive: four archbishops, Cranmer, Heath, Parker and May: six bishops, Latimer, Ridley, Shaxton, Day, Edward Foxe, and Bale himself; John Edmunds and Geoffrey Davis, both among the compilers of the 1837 Bishops' Book, besides some eager young students; the gentle and intense Bilney, rash Robert Barnes, brilliant John Frith, and over a score of others who sooner or later would die in the flames in witness to their belief. 4 Bale knew many of these men, some of them intimately, and from the debates at the tavern or elsewhere came some of the "eddies of doctrine" which Bale says drove him to study the scriptures, or, as he puts it, "swept him back to the founts of true theology". Yet for some time after he took his degree in 1527/8, Bale continued to serve the Carmelites. He may at first have hoped to reform the Church from within. We do not know when he began writing plays or when he embraced the Protestant cause. 5 The debate between More and Tyndale, the burning of Tyndale's New Testament, the disgrace and imprisonment of Barnes may all have played their part in bringing him over to the reformist 3

E. G. Rupp, Studies in the Making of the English Protestant Tradition (Cambridge, 1949), p. 19. 4 Ibid. 5

Davies, pp. 207-9.

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JOHN BALE

side. We do know that he was very deeply moved by the death of Bilney who in 1531 "went up to Jerusalem", as he said, and was burned in the Lollards' Pit in Norwich. 6 By all accounts Bilney was a lovable, eager person, and Bale writes of him as of a true saint. He denies that the pope has any peculiar authority to canonize men. "All souls", he affirms, "who depart hence in faith and in testimony of the word of God" are "saints most lawfully canonized ... yea", he finishes warmly, "Bilney also if he so departed, which I doubt not". 7 Whether the death of Bilney was the turning point or not, we do know that in 1531 Bale's orthodoxy was first called in question on the grounds that he denied the Real Presence in the sacrament. Several times thereafter he was in trouble with Lee, the Archbishop of York, and Stokesby, the Bishop of London, and by 1536 he had left the Carmelites, married, and taken a parish at Thornden, Suffolk. Later that year he was again at odds with Stokesby, his own parishioners having reported him for heresy. His Answer to the charges shows that by then he was theologically left of the Ten Articles. He asserts that the Bible is the touchstone of truth and that services in Latin are "lip service only". The practice of confession has some values, but "forgiveness tarrieth not upon reservation of cases pertaining to popes and bishops". Communion is operative because "God is in heaven" and in every faithful person by His spirit and word. Our Lady and the saints (who are canonized not by the pope but by their faith) are more pleased by good living than by superstition, and prayers should be said for the living rather than the dead, whose "debts are already forgiven". On the grounds that Cyprian had already questioned its antiquity, he reserves judgment about whether Christ "descended into Hell". Evidently these views commended him to the Protestant Earl of Oxford, for whom he was working by 1537. Either in that year or the next, Bale had a new master 8

H. C. Porter, Reformation bridge, 1958), p. 49. 7 Rupp, pp. 22-31.

and Reaction

in Tudor

Cambridge

(Cam-

JOHN BALE

33

fhomas Cromwell. 8 He must have felt that God's hand was upon him when he was selected as a protégé by one of the architects of the English Reformation. Cromwell's interest in him may at this point require a little explanation. Since Henry's excommunication and the Act of Supremacy, 9 floods of literature had been issued to persuade the public to accept the King as Supreme Head of the National Church. Pamphlets in English such as A Glass of Truth and A Little Treatise against the Muttering of Some Papists in Corners were matched by more learned treatises like Gardiner's De Vera Obedientia and Edward Foxe's De Vera Differentia Regiae Potestis et Ecclesiaiticae. Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pads (1324) was translated in 1535. 10 From the moment the alliance of France and Spain drove Henry in 1534 to negotiate with the German Protestants, official directives such as the Royal Injunctions to the Clergy, which accompanied the Ten Articles, were often supplemented by officially inspired propaganda. For example, we know that Thomas Starkey, one of Henry VIII's chaplains who had been favored by Cromwell, wrote in 1535 An Exortation to the People Instructing Them in Unity and Obedience. Starkey, like Melanchthon, made a distinction between "things necessary", that is, those doctrines belief in which was necessary to salvation, and "things indifferent" such as saints' 8 It is sometimes thought that he retained the Earl's patronage while employed by Cromwell. 9 The narrative which follows is necessarily abbreviated; for fuller accounts, see G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors (London, 1955), Ch. VI; A. F. Pollard, Thomas Cranmer (London, 1926). Ch. V. Of course terms such as radical, reformer, conservative, are only approximations. Standpoints shifted according to the issues. To take only one example, Barnes, Cranmer, and Gardiner supported the Royal divorce, whereas Tyndale, Luther, and Thomas More opposed it. 10 Marsilius' insistence that political sovereignty derived from God (as much as from the pope) was naturally popular with those who wished to find a philosophical justification for the removal of papal power from England and to establish a national sovereign state. Most of the writers mentioned were influenced by him, as was Melanchthon, who dedicated his 1535 edition of the Loci Communes to Henry. The assumption that the consiliar agreement for which English and Germans sought in these years also found precedents in Marsilius.

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JOHN BALE

days and vestments, on which opinions might differ, identifying the former with the traditional "law of nature". But where Melanchthon, hoped to make "things necessary" the basis for an international conciliar agreement (such as was currently being discussed between the German and English theologians), Starkey saw that it could be used in England to win obedience and allegiance to moderate Anglican theology which might be politically viable. 11 This point of view would suit Cromwell, and was perhaps inspired by him. Starkey was only one of many: William Marshall the translator of Defensor Pacts, John Rastell, Thomas Gibson, Richard Morison, and Richard Taverner were among those "quick wits" later mentioned by Foxe whose task, he said, was to "beat down false religion and advance the truth", 12 that is, to attack the pope and the Church of Rome and to defend the Royal Supremacy. Bale was for a time to serve as one of these "quick wits". Doubtless it was because he thought Bale had some talent that Cromwell rescued him from his brushes with conservative bishops, as Bale tells us, more than once ("semper") for the sake of his comedies ("ob editas comediae"). He employed him to write plays which should embody teachings which would further his policies, and his accounts show generous payments to "Bale and his fellows". The troupe, active 1538-9, went on tour; performances are recorded at Cambridge, Barnstaple, and Thetford. King John was played before Cranmer in January, 1539. Had the political situation remained stable, Bale would propably have gone on with his playwriting, but in those very years the struggle between the religious radicals and the conservatives was crystallizing. Cromwell, Cranmer, and their followers were in the ascendant for a time, but Norfolk and Gardiner and their faction were gathering strength, marked, for example, by the doctrinally Catholic Six Articles (1539) which replaced the more reformist Ten Articles. 11

See W. G. Zeeveld, "Thomas Starkey and the Cromwellian Polity", Journal of Modem History, XV (Sept 1943) pp. 177-191. 13 Acts and Monuments V, p. 403. See Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, 3 vols. (London, 19S4), I. Chapter IV, for an interesting account of Cromwell's propaganda methods.

JOHN BALE

35

The negotiations with the German Protestants were allowed to drop. Cromwell lost favor with Henry by persuading him into marriage with the homely and ill-bred Anne of Cleves, which he found repugnant. Norfolk managed to interest Henry in his niece, Catherine Howard, and he and Gardiner gradually persuaded him that Cromwell was a traitor and a heretic. Cromwell was arrested, the marriage with Anne was annulled, Cromwell was executed for heresy and treason, and shortly after these events Henry married Catherine. The triumph of the conservatives seemed to be complete, but a warning to extremists of either persuasion was surely intended in the executions which followed Cromwell's by a few days. On July 30th there were burnt at Smithfield three friars, martyrs in the old faith, and three reformers, witnesses to the new: William Jerome, Thomas Garrard, and Robert Barnes. These three were Cambridge men, contemporaries of Bale, and their deaths brought to about ten the roll of men from that university who had died for the reform cause. 13 Bale's mind may have gone back to the burning of Bilney in Norwich, almost ten years before. In any case, as a heretic, a married priest, a protégé of Cromwell, he was a marked man. Understandably he took fright and 0ike his namesake, John of Patmos, he reminds us) fled from the wrath to come. "So did I, poor creature, with my poor wife and children, fleeing into Germany for the same". 14 Bale's dramatic work was deeply affected by the tempestuous events of these years. He was one of a group of young men who had envisioned great possibilities and hoped great hopes, who had seen these hopes dashed and flame up again, and had lived with excitement and danger and sometimes death. In this tense and uncertain period Bale developed his passion and vigor as a propagandist, from these events came his powerful reforming zeal, his impatience with all hindrances, his hatred of the papists, 13

See Rupp, Chapter IV, for details. His list includes Tyndale, whose association with Cambridge is uncertain, but his death unquestionably shocked reformists everywhere. On pp. 44-46 Rupp described the steps which led to the deaths of Barnes, Garrard (or Garrett), and Jerome. 14 Bale was perfectly capable of thinking up this simple analogy himself; but it is a fact that Luther called his time of hiding in the Wartburg "my Patmos".

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JOHN BALE

his mounting apocalyptic hope. The irony is that one who felt himself so much in the vanguard of a new army should arm himself with weapons from a way of Ufe he thought he had left behind - literary forms from the medieval church. It is usual to speak of Bale's dramatic work as falling into two periods. The first includes all the plays which he set down in the list of his writings he made in 1538, 1 5 the second the additional plays he listed in his Summariom in 1548, 16 but almost certainly written before his flight in 1540. The division is a convenient one and will be used here, though the second succeeds the first without any important gap that we know about.

2.

BALE'S FIRST PERIOD

The full list in Anglorum Heliades is as follows: On the Lord's Prayer (lost) On the Seven Sins (lost) Life of John the Baptist (14 books) 1 7 (lost) Christ and the Doctors (lost) Christ's Passion (2 books) (lost) Christ's Resurrection (2 books) (lost) On the Two Marriages of the King (2 books) (lost) On Papistical Sects (lost) Against Scoffers and Backbiters (2 books) (lost) On the Treacheries of the Papists (2 books) (lost) Against the Corruptors of the Word of God (lost) On the Treachery of Thomas à Becket (lost) King John On the Threefold Law of God (Three Laws) Bale's Answer of 1536, already referred to, contains the first 18

Anglorum Heliades: Harl. MS. 3838, 1538. Some historians think the list was made two years earlier. lllustrium Maioris Brittanniae Scriptorom... Summarium, ... Printed at Wesel by D. van der Straten for John Overton at Ipswich, 1548. 17 A "liber" or book seems to be a vague measure of length. 16

JOHN BALE

37

reference to his dramatic activity and appears to speak of a play not on this list. When he questioned the clause in the Creed "He descended into Hell" on grounds of doubtful antiquity, he remarked that he had already warned his parishioners against accepting the statement too literally as "set forth in painted clothes or in glass windows, or like as myself had set it forth in the country there in a certain play". 1 8 This sounds very much as if Bale had written a Harrowing of Hell play, which, because it smacked of medieval credulity, he preferred to forget by the time he made this playlist. On the Lord's Prayer and On the Seven Sins also sound like medieval titles; there were Paternoster plays as well as many treatises on the Sins; still, I would not put it past Bale to rework these themes into anti-Catholic diatribes, the sins in particular representing peculiarly "papistical" vices like those in Three Laws. On the other hand, he did omit these titles from the lists he made in 1548 and 1557, so by that time at any rate he evidently thought them to be too dated to be worth remembering. In these later lists he retained Against the Corruptors of the Word of God and Against Scoffers and Backbiters. but again, though these phrases appear in medieval works, Bale was quite capable of turning them against the Catholic church, which he evidently attacked in On Papistical Sects and On the Treacheries of the Papists. His stand for Henry VIII was probably as clear in The Two Marriages of the King and Thomas à Becket as in King John. The titles Christ and the Doctors, Christ's Passion and Christ's Resurrection do not demonstrate that Bale already planned a series on the life of Christ, but they certainly suggest it. If Christ's Resurrection is, as sometimes thought, identical with The Resurrection of Our Lord, the extant fragment of which has been printed by the Malone Society (1912) - and its encouragement to read the scriptures and enter into the new life with faith is quite in his vein - we may reasonably speculate that Bale had already 18

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, James Gairdner, R. H. Brodie (London, 1862-1910), 21 vols., 33 parts, XI, 446-^7.

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JOHN BALE

conceived of a Protestant cycle which would rival the traditional mysteries.19 The last puzzle on this early list is the description of the Baptist play as "in 14 books". This does not seem to apply to the extant John the Baptist's Preaching and if it was really 14

times the average "book" listed it must have been of epic proportions - about 30,000 lines. We turn now to the two extant plays of this period, On the Threefold Law of God, usually called Three Laws, and his best known work, King John, 2 0 It is not always realized how thoroughly both these plays are steeped in the doctrine of Antichrist - or indeed how powerful this concept was in the minds of the early reformers. "I whisper in your ear, I do not know whether the pope is Antichrist or not, his decretals are so corrupt and crucify Christ", wrote Luther in 1518 on the eve of his debates with Eck. The horrible suspicion was soon to be a certainty in his mind and in the minds of his followers and to become one of the most powerful arguments on the Protestant side. The Antichrist legend was a very ancient one, indeed preChristian. Like some mythological monster, it had an infinite capacity for changing its shape to reflect the fears and hatreds of different periods. The Jews in captivity had believed that the Messiah's coming was retarded by an Anti-Messiah, whose fury against God's people would reach its height before the deliverer's advent. Thus from the earliest form of the legend, present suffering presaged the speedy coming of a savior; the worse the times, the better the hope. The New Testament added other elements to the myth, for when the early Christians were in danger of persecution, the Anti-Messiah became the Antichrist. St. Paul 19

Davies (p. 210) remarks that the points made in The Resurrection "suggest a parish priest trying to dispel rural prejudice in the spirit of Henry VIII's Reformation". 20 Both these plays underwent revisions, perhaps under Edward, certainly under Elizabeth. However, I am inclined to agree with Davies (pp. 210-11) that the main ideas were all in the early versions, not only because they were so clearly fundamental in Bale's thinking in 1538 but especially because they bulked so large in much Protestant writing of this period.

JOHN BALE

39

believed that before Christ came again, there would be "a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God", who worked through false "signs and lying wonders", but whom the Lord would consume "with the spirit of his mouth and ... destroy with the brightness of his coming". 21 Christ Himself prophesied wars and rumors of wars, unnatural treachery, false christs, false prophets, and false signs; persecution, woes, and flight. In times of trouble and persecution the faithful could only watch and suffer in hope, for "he that shall endure unto the end ... shall be saved". The powerful imagination of the author of Revelation gave further shape and visual substance to the apocalyptic hope. To him Rome-Babylon was the great harlot "drunk with the blood of saints". Under her dominion, idolatry, immorality, false prophesy, and persecution might abound: but the sufferings of the faithful would be short. The martyrdom of two witnesses to the truth would presage the final engagement, when God's archangel Michael would come, with the terrible rider on the pale horse, and the beast of Antichrist would be cast into the pit. The true prophets would be vindicated and Christ would claim the true church as His Bride. 2 2 The useful feature of the Antichrist myth was that it could be modified to fit almost any conflict. The Antichrist was always the tyrant of the hour. The myth survived the Dark Ages, was employed in the crusades and in the strife of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and became popular with medieval sectaries, among whom the Spiritual Franciscans were the first to cry "the Pope is Antichrist". Wycliff and Hus also enlarged upon this theme. In the fifteenth century there was widespread expectation of the Second Coming which, according to the Golden Legend, would be preceded by terrible "signs and tokens" and by "the malice and deceit of the Antichrist" - here not, of course, identified with the pope. 23 21

Π Thess. 2 : 3-8. See II Thess., especially chs. 7, 8, 11; Mark 13, Matt. 24, Revelation. 88 The Doomsday pageants which closed the cycles frequently mention or describe such a struggle. Isolated medieval Antichrist plays (such as the one at Tegernsee) dramatize the final battle.

22

40

JOHN BALE

But to return to Luther, the more his antagonism to Rome intensified, the more he came to believe with his whole soul that he was no longer struggling with a human antagonist, but with the world-rulers of this darkness, with principalities and powers on the side of the Antichrist. His ideas, developed in his Adversus Execrabilem Antichristi Bullam, became enormously popular among all classes of his followers in Germany. 24 Before long English reformers took up the cry. Tyndale saw evidences of the strength of the Antichrist in false signs and false miracles and in the increase of persecution, which, he reminded his readers, offered hope that the end of tribulation was near. Bale's friend, Barnes, spoke often of the Antichrist's work of persecution through a celibate clergy, false bishops, and the false church. Frith's Revelation of Antichrist, 2 5 based on Luther, fixed for the whole century the details of the Protestant Antichrist myth. The outward piety of Rome, he says, only masks corruption, idolatry, and deceit, for her true nature is proved by the abuses she encourages - greedy and lecherous clergy, a multiplicity of sacraments, auricular confession, the veneration of saints, prayers for the dead, luxurious altars and vestments, pardons, privileges, and disputations. Frith even blamed the Antichrist for the injustices in canon law and the inadequacies of English universities. Now Bale and his friend John Foxe, whose work will be treated in a later chapter, were familiar with the myth in its Protestant form and with the New Testament passages which were used to support it. Both also admired the famous Lutheran Antichrist play, Kirchmayer's Pammachius, which Bale probably translated soon after it was published in 1538. Three Laws was an independent treatment of the Antichrist theme; a decade later Foxe was to write an Antichrist play Christus Triumphans, inspired in part by Pammachius. 24

See H. Preuss, whose valuable monograph Die Vorstellung v. Antichristus (Leipzig, 1906) shows how widespread was the appeal of the myth and how it inspired opposition to the pope. 25 Richard Brightwell [i.e. John Frith], A Pistle to the Ch[riste]n Reader The Revelation of Antichrist ([Mal]boro[w]; [Antwerp, 1529, according to the B. M. catalogue].

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Three Laws 2 6 sets three Laws or Virtues against six Vices led by Infidelity, i.e. the apostate Roman church. The Laws are eventually corrupted by the Vices. The Vices are costumed for identification, Idolatry as a witch, Sodomy as a monk, Avarice as a canon lawyer, Ambition as a bishop, Hypocrisy as a friar, and False Doctrine as a doctor of divinity. Infidelity's costume is not indicated, but it seems possible that he was costumed as an ecclesiastic and in some way unmasked at the end. The war of the six Vices against the three Laws represents the historical, cosmic, ongoing struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist. The scheme of the play may be clarified by the following table. Law

Stage of Life Innocence

Law of Nature

Historical Period Eden

Transgression Adam to Moses Moses to Law of Moses Affliction N.T. Christ to Law of Christ Redemption Present

The Law's Defence

Corrupting Vices

(None needed) Conscience

Idolatry ) Sodomy J Avarice ) Ten Commandments Ambition J New Hypocrisy \ Testament False L Doctrine J (Each pair led by Infidelity)

Bale himself opens the play with a prologue on the nature of law, with learned allusions to the Chrysippus and Cicero. He explains that Infidelity has corrupted each law in turn - in fact, he outlines the first four acts, in the manner of a preacher giving out sermon headings. In the first act, God personally hands each law its proper defence and gives it the divine commission. The Law of Nature is reminded that it is written in men's hearts, 2 7 the Law of Moses 26

Thre Lawes... of Nature, Moses and Christ (Antwerp, 1547). The imprint "per ... Bamburgensem, 1538" is fictitious according to the Β. M. catalogue. Thomas Colwell reprinted the play in London, 1562. 87 Romans 2 : 14-15.

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is presented with the tablets of the law, and the Law of Christ with the New Testament Thou, law of Nature, instruct him first of all; Thou, law of Moses, correct him for his fall; And thou, law of Christ, give him a godly mind; Raise him unto grace, and save him from the fiend.28 The next three acts demonstrate how each law in turn is corrupted by the Vices. The sequence in each act is the same. The Law concerned explains his nature and function, and is interrupted, ridiculed, and driven out by Infidelity. The appropriate Vices then plan new attacks on the Law until he returns, much the worse for wear, to report on the depredations of his enemies and to appeal to the audience and especially to the Christian prince (i.e. Henry VIII) to redress his wrongs. Each Vice in turn boasts of his success: Idolatry of her magic spells, though she claims she always tells her beads and fasts on Good Friday, Sodomy of incontinence at the altar and infanticide in the convent, Avarice of the exploitation of widows and orphans, Ambition of corrupting the scriptures, Hypocrisy of hindering matrimony, and False Doctrine of his strangle hold on the universities. Each recounts examples of his influence from both Testaments and from contemporary situations. The fifth act, which is based on the closing chapters of Revelation, brings divine intervention. Vindicta Dei strides in to avenge "the innocent blood of saints". (One wonders if Bale again had Bilney's death in mind.) Infidelity admits to playing the Antichrist and is punished like his victims with water, fire, and the sword, until he is finally chased off the stage with torches, crying vainly "Credo, credo". Babylon ("old popishness") is destroyed, God announces a new heaven and earth and the advent of the Bridegroom, and the three Laws, now purified, go out to continue their work. Fides Christi urges the audience to heed the teaching of the Laws and to have faith in Christ. 48

The Dramatic Writings of John Bale, ed. John S. Farmer (London, 1907), p. 9. It is regretted that editions of Bale's plays in the original spelling were not available.

JOHN BALE

43

Three Laws must have been a very effective piece of propaganda. The clear, orderly, sermon-like structure, the repetition of the action in the three middle scenes, the startling dénouement, and the fierce rhetoric mark it as the work of a teacher and preacher who was as sure of his method as of his message. In fact, however reformist and anti-Catholic its teaching, the first thing that strikes one about the Three Laws is how thoroughly medieval it is in conception. The plot devices are familiar, the descent from innocence through transgression to affliction from which the sinner is rescued by grace being one of the very commonest sequences in morality plays. The conflict between the forces of evil and the forces of good recall the battles of the Vices and Virtues in, for instance, The Castle of Perseverance. For the stuff of his homilies, too, Bale turns to standard medieval concepts. His definition of the essence of law in his prologue and his account of the functions of the various Laws closely resembles that in Aquinas' Treatise on Law, where Natural Law, the Old Law, and the New Law of the Gospel are discussed; the resemblance even extends to the subdivision of the Old Law into ceremonial, moral, and judicial. 29 The great encyclopaedist Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190-1264) in his Speculum Ήatúrale divides history into three main periods, "ante legem: et sub lege: et sub gracia". After the fall, man had natural law to guide him; then the written law was given to Moses and remained supreme until the coming of Christ. 30 Though other sources are possible, a paragraph in the Speculum could have given Bale the suggestion that all the Laws, even the Law of Christ, are susceptible to corruption. Whether Bale used the Speculum directly or not, these ideas would have been available to a scholar with his training, for they were disseminated in many widely used handbooks. Nor was there anything new in Bale's use of liturgical parody, for his mock collect, mock creed, and satirical "Song 99

Summa Theologica, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1920), v m , 2-319; the concept of the three-fold law is Patitine (Rom. 5, especially vss. 14-21), but Bale's details of elaboration are closer to Aquinas. 30 Speculum Naturale, Π, Lib. 33, Cap. xxiii.

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upon Benedictus" have numberless medieval predecessors. No reader of Chaucer needs to be reminded of medieval attacks on the clergy; indeed, hypocritical monks and lecherous clergy are referred to even in high-minded didactic works like Handlyng Syruie. What is so clever is that the traditional features - the comprehensive scheme, the categories, the morality plot, the satirical tone - all provide a familiar setting for what is new; the accusation that the archenemy now sits in the seat of Peter himself, the exhortation to the true followers of Christ to join in the struggle against the great foe, the Roman Church, the Whore of Babylon, the Antichrist. Bale has worked in many of the abuses attacked by Luther in the Ninety-five Theses, as well as two of his most strongly recommended remedies against abuse, the power of the Christian ruler and the power of the Bible. Two scenes in the play close with appeals to the king to destroy idolatry and clerical celibacy and to curb the greed and ambition of churchmen. Here Bale was following the lines laid down in Luther's To the Christian Nobility, an exhortation to the German princes to establish a Christian order. Equally characteristic of Luther is the admonition to use the scriptures as a weapon against the false church. Bale dramatizes this comically. Infidelity and the Vices are shocked at the attack on their glosses and run about in alarm when they hear that the New Testament is being translated and printed and that large numbers of people are reading it. In desperation they try to destroy it: Evangelium is arrested, mocked, and despoiled of his robe, even as Christ was. But the Gospel cannot be destroyed, and Bale urges his hearers to read and follow it. Bible study will make clear the course of history, put an end to "wrasting" of scripture by the "hypocrites" and strengthen the forces against the Antichrist. This is why Christ sent "his living word to all Christian nations", For no other way is there unto salvation But the word of God in every generation.31

31

Dramatic

Writings, p. 62.

JOHN BALE

45

Another hotly debated issue on which Bale exclaimed with particular vehemence was clerical marriage. Celibacy of the clergy, he declared, was "the great sin against the Holy Ghost". This curious reading of a much debated text he may owe to Barnes, who said that the Pope should never be forgiven for hindering such marriages, his action being "a new devised sin against the Holy Ghost". 32 Many of Bale's prejudices were so much the common property of the more radical reformers that it would be easy and not very profitable to multiply quotations. It seems certain, however, that Bale owed a special debt to Tyndale, who, like Aquinas, treats the Three Laws, though he gives more space than either Aquinas or Bale to the Law of Christ, which is the law of love and Christian liberty. Tyndale, too, defended scriptures as the fire to test the gold of truth, the touchstone of religious practice, and the fuel of the spirit, and condemned the "hypocrites" for objecting to Bible study, like owls who cannot bear light because it exposes their wickedness and leads to their downfall. 3 3 A number of curious little points in Bale's play can be illuminated by comparison with Tyndale's writings. The mystifying strictures against Ambition for stopping up "Abraham's pits" become quite clear when we realize that Tyndale used "the wells of Abraham" as a metaphor for the scriptures, and that he said "the wicked and spiteful Philistines" had stopped them up with the "earth of their false expositions". When at the end of Act III, the face of Moses is veiled, Bale is using another of Tyndale's images: "Christ plucketh away from the face of Moses the veil which the Scribes and Pharisees had spread". The confusion in Act IV as to whether the Gospel is burnt or buried probably rests on a similar confusion in The Obedience of a Christian Man, where Tyndale speaks angrily of "Rochester and his holy bretheren" burning the New Testament as they would have burned Christ himself, while a few pages later he says they "buried the 32

The Whole Workes of W[illiam] Tlyndale], John Frith, and Doct. Barnes (London, 1573), pp. 309-39. 33 William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, ed. Rev. Henry Walter, Parker Society, 1848. No. 32, pp. 2-19, 46-52, 144-7.

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Testament". 3 4 These are only a few examples of many which could be produced, but they show, I think, that Bale had Tyndale's writings constantly in mind. A brief comment on the relationship of King John to Three Laws may be added. King John is another Antichrist play insofar as Bale views John's quarrel with the Pope as part of the agelong struggle between good and evil which was rapidly approaching a crisis. John is not only a type of Henry, he is also a predecessor of Henry in the specifically English area of the contest. This is made clear for example when Imperial Majesty - Henry - continues and succeeds after John has failed. John is also one with the long line of God's chosen leaders which stretches back to the Old Testament and (in the final recension of the play) forward to Elizabeth, who, filled with the spirit of Daniel, will subdue the papists and become a beacon to all Christian princes. To reinforce this Bale finds Old Testament analogies for the Christian magistrate. This noble King John, as a faithful Moses, Withstood proud Pharoah for his poor Israel; Minding to bring it out of the land of darkness. But the Egyptians did against him so rebel That his poor people did still in the desert dwell, Till that Duke Joshue, which was our late King Henry Clearly brought us into the land of milk and honey. 3 5

In the next verse John is compared to David and elsewhere to the reforming Josiah. He fails in his attempt to deliver the poor widow England from the pope and his agents, and in the end stands alone, a pitiful figure, deserted by his own nobility and clergy and trusting only in the providence of God who had likewise once comforted David "in his most heaviness". Again as in Three Laws, the wicked clergy are identified with the Pharisees and the Sadducees who "devour widows' houses" 34

Ibid., pp. 28, 46, 114-16, 131-134. These metaphors may not, of course, have been original with Tyndale, but I think Bale found them in his writings. 35 Dramatic Writings, pp. 223-4.

JOHN BALE

47

and "gross up long prayers", who persecute the prophets, and who deceive and exploit the poor with relics and ceremonies. And again, of course, the pope is Antichrist, "Bloody Bel, the ground and mother of whoredom - The Romish Church I mean, more ugly than ... Sodom". This Babylon who has brought forth "an heap of adders of Antichrist's generation", and who will drown the Scriptures if she can, is joined by Infidelity and the Antichrist to bring about the ruin of God's people. Again this evil league is contrasted with the true church (whose champion is King John, later "Duke Joshue", and later still Queen Elizabeth) which is finally brought by Imperial Majesty to true allegiance and the true faith. 36 Thus once again Bale pictures the children of light triumphing over the children of darkness in God's vindication of the faithful. By stating it this time in political terms, he contributed his share to the climate of opinion in which the chronicles of Hall and Holinshed, The Troublesome Reign, and Shakespeare's King

John were to flourish. 3 7

3.

BALE'S SECOND PERIOD

Bale's next playlist, found in the Summarium of 1548, adds nine new plays and a translation of Kirchmayer's Antichrist play, Pammachius. 36

38

Bale is also at great pains to find scriptural grounds for the Royal Supremacy, and to represent John as a great reader and quoter of the Bible. Like Three Laws, King John contains some liturgical parody. 37 "Bale got most of his facts from the Chronica Majora of Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris. On the whole the Chronicle is violently hostile to John, but its general opposition to Papal exactions must have pleased Bale". "Stripped of its allegory, Bale's play stands out as a surprisingly modern piece of history, highly selective and extremely partial, of course, but still notably analytical and interpretive" (Davies, p. 212. See p. 211-12 for a discussion which supplements that in the Malone Society edition). 38 For an account of this play and the furore it created when produced at Cambridge University in 1545, see C. H. Herford, Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1886), pp. 12^-132.

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JOHN BALE

The Baptism and Temptation (lost) The Raising of Lazarus (lost) The Council of Bishops (lost) Simon the Leper (lost) The Lord's Supper (lost) God's Promises John the Baptist's Preaching The Temptation of Christ The Image of Love (lost) Pammachius (translated from Thomas Kirchmayer) Presumably these represent his work from about 1538 to 1540. The surviving plays suggest that Bale was moderating his zeal a little, but not much. The fact that he continued to write what amounted to Protestant propaganda in dramatic form shows that the Six Articles, which asserted among other things the sanctity of monastic vows and the illegality of clerical marriages, were not fully operative. Bale would have been harshly treated on both these counts. In discussing Bale's first period, I suggested that perhaps Bale was planning a Protestant cycle. The new titles in this period suggest that he was working on a series on the life of Christ; indeed, if we combine the plays on Christ from both lists, they constitute a fairly complete cycle. 1538 list Christ and the Doctors Christ's Passion Christ's Resurrection

1548 list God's Promises John the Baptist's Peaching The Temptations of Christ The Baptism and Temptation The Raising of Lazarus The Council of Priests Simon the Leper The Last Supper and the Foot Washing

Actually, Christ and the Doctors would not fit into Bale's final plans, for, as we shall see, the first three plays on the second list are very tightly knit together, but it indicates, as do the other titles, that Bale was using chiefly incidents commonly dramatized

JOHN BALE

49

in medieval times. However, he does omit some familiar events. He has no Old Testament plays proper, although God's Promises touches on significant events and leaders of old who point forward to Christ. He has used none of the incidents associated with the birth of Christ, possibly because he had not yet had time to dramatize them, but more probably because he was not interested in the more poetical aspects of the Gospel story. But (allowing for the fact that in the extant cycles we have many playlets covering the Passion and the Resurrection where Bale gives only blanket titles), the rest of his series parallels the cycle plays rather closely. It is noteworthy that the one incident he dramatized from the ministry of Jesus - The Raising of Lazarus 3 9 is one of the two incidents so selected in the cycles. And all his other titles indicate standard subjects, except that Simon the Leper is not usually given a separate play. 40 It looks very much as if Bale were consciously writing a Protestant cycle which was to steal the thunder of the Papists and roll it forth to spur on the radicals and alarm the conservatives. The very opening of God's Promises suggests this. Bale (who acts as Prologue-Epilogue Commentator throughout) indicates that the whole work of God through Christ is to be presented. God will show mercy to every generation, And to his kingdom of his great goodness call His elected spouse or faithful congregation, As here shall appear by open protestation, Which from Christ's birth shall to his death conclude: They come, that thereof will show the certitude. 41

The links between God's Promises, John the Baptist's Preaching, and The Temptations of Christ suggest how carefully constructed and neatly integrated the whole cycle would have been. The Promises provides a conspectus of the Old Testament premonitions of Christ. Bale tells us that the law and the prophets are 89 Lazarus appears in the Townley Conspiracie and in the Last Supper play in the Ludus Conventriae. 40 Simon is only mentioned in Matt 26 ; 6 as the owner of the house where Jesus was anointed by the woman traditionally identified with the Magdalene. Could Mary Magdalene have been the subject of this play? 41 Dramatic Writings, p. 86.

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but "dark figure and shadow" of what is to come. The play foretells the baptism of Jesus and the descent of the dove, which we will see in the next play. John the Baptist's Preaching begins by reminding us of the previous play, mentioning the "shadows and figures" of the Old Covenant. John begins his preaching just where he left off. Christ is baptised, as the Promises foretold, announcing as He does so that He has become flesh "for the sake of the promises". At the close of the play Bale reminds us again that Christ's work was the culmination of God's dealings with His people. Adam, by his pride, did paradise up spere; Christ hath opened heaven by his great meekness here.42 The Temptation 4 3 begins by recalling the sign of the descending dove, and Christ reminds the audience that his forty days of fasting was "shadowed" by Moses' forty years in the wilderness. Satan also has heard of the recent events - John's preaching, the dove, the voice from heaven; and after the temptations are concluded, the angels praise Christ for His victory which was intended from the creation of the world. So Bale makes us think continually back to Adam and forward to Christ and reminds us that the whole chain of events is part of the divine plan. So far, the theme is that of the Corpus Christi plays. However, when the individual plays are examined, it becomes apparent that each has been injected with some of the new doctrines, so that in each succeeding work there is an increasing emphasis on the importance of the scriptures, justification by faith, the abuses of the times, and the expectation that the day of choice is at hand. External evidence also supports the claim that these plays form a conscious trilogy. Not only does Bale always list them together in this order, but the Preaching and the Temptation were printed together. 4 4 Finally, Bale himself has told how they were played in sequence at Kilkenny on the day of Queen Mary's coronation 42

Ibid., p. 148. A Brefe Comedy ... Concernynge the Temptacyon of Our Lorde and Saver Jesus Christ (Wesel, 1597). 44 W. W. Greg, "Some Notes on Early Plays", The Library, XI (1930), p. 44-51. 48

JOHN BALE

51

- Bishop Bale's last blow for Protestantism amid the "frantic Papists" of Ireland: The yonge men in the forenone played a Tragedye of Gods promisesin the olde law at the market crosse with organe, playynges and songes very aptely. In the afternone agayne they played a Commedie of sanct Johan Baptistes preachings, of Christes baptisynge and of his temptacion in the wildernesse.45

The series begins with God's Promises. 46 As in Three Laws, the plot consists in a carefully thought out sermon-like pattern. In each act there is a conversation between God and a significant recipient of one of the historic promises. Each conversation follows a set pattern. At first an angry God denounces the men of this generation until the representative of humanity humbly beseeches Him on man's behalf and finally "pacifies" Him. God then delivers some form of the promise, together with a "seal" or "sign", the recipient praises him, and the scene concludes with an antiphon accompanied by organ music. Possibly the general lines of the dialogue were suggested by Abraham's plea for the men of Sodom in Genesis 18, but the pattern has been imposed on all the scenes (whether the Bible justified it or not) so that each opens with estrangement between God and man and closes with their harmonious reconciliation. Again, as with Three Laws, Bale exhibits his passion for squeezing in every possible detail, for each figure represents his period as well as himself, and his sinful contemporaries are reprimanded along with him; in the Abraham scene, for instance, God also denounces Nimrod, Lot, and the Sodomites. As before, Bale's neat, sermon-like pattern can be represented by a table. Each scene is accompanied by an appropriate "sign" 4 7 and an appropriate antiphon, thus:

45

The Vocacyon of John Bale, reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany (London, 1808), I; quoted in McCusker, pp. 77-8. 46 A Tragedy ... Manyfesting the Chef e Promises of God unto man ... in the Olde Law (Wesel, ca. 1547). 47 Were these "signs" perhaps painted on banners and hung out to mark the various scenes?

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JOHN BALE

Character Adam Noah Abraham Moses David Isaiah John the Baptist

Promise redemption by Eve's seed the flood nations blessed in his seed a prophet like him a Messiah of his line a Messiah for the Gentiles the Incarnation

Sign

Antiphon

creeping serpent

O Sapientia

rainbow circumcision

O Oriens splendor O rex gentium

Passover

O Emmanuel

building of Temple Virgin's conception descent of dove

O Adonai O radix Jesse O clavis David

In spite of the repeated pattern, the play does not become monotonous, as each scene has its own emphasis and the action mounts to a climax as the dialogues progress. Adam displays the most abject despair, appropriate to the period directly following the Fall. He grovels on the ground, weeping that he is "but slime" and that he fell through his own fault and Eve's urging. God reminds him that he is responsible, for he was endowed with "reason and will to understand / The good from the evil". When Adam has been sufficiently reduced to despair, God rather grudgingly promises that Eve's seed shall bruise the seed of the serpent and purify him from wickedness. Noah appears somewhat in the character of a diplomat, for he opens his appeal by praising God's mercy to Adam. "All lieth in thy hands", he concludes, humbly acknowledging God's sovereignty. Rewarded by the promise that the rainbow will be a token that there are to be no more floods, he responds, "This promise in faith is our justification", and continues in a remarkable speech on the primacy of faith, a variation on the "substance of things hoped for" passage in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews: Faith in that promise old did Adam justify, In that promise faith made Eve to prophecy [sic]. Faith in that promise proved Abel innocent; In that promise faith made Seth fall obedient. That faith taught Enoch God's name first to call;

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53

And made Methuselah the oldest man of all. That faith brought Enoch to so high exercise That God took him up with him into paradise. Of that faith the want made Cain to hate the good; And all his offspring to perish in the flood. Faith in that promise preserved both me and mine; So will it all them which follow the same line. 48

Abraham receives the classic promise (in the "stars of heaven" form) almost as his right. Yet the tale of Israel's sins continues. Moses is reminded of the evils committed by Esau, Ishmael, Dinah, Judah, and Onan, and some of the more unsavory anecdotes about these persons are retold. Fortunately, Moses* diplomacy is equal to the occasion, and man is granted yet another chance. Still Israel continues in her idolatry, and David is chastised for his sin with Bathsheba, though God is finally moved by the king's "inner contrition" (Bale wants to make clear that a formal confession would have been inadequate), and promises a "prince of David's line" to rule over the "happy kingdom of faith". A characteristically medieval piece of allegorizing appears in the comment on this "sign" - the Temple is to remain incomplete "in token that Christ must finish everything". The coming of Isaiah marks a definite turning point. God visibly softens, and the distance between Him and His interlocuter narrows perceptibly as He and the prophet grieve together over the delinquency of Israel. God inveighs against vain sacrifices, fasts, and ceremonies, while Isaiah in a daring couplet blames the leaders of the people When the prince is good the people are better; And as he is naught, their vices are greater.49

God promises "the Lord Emmanuel", a "bright blossom [of the] old stock of Jesse". 50 This more hopeful mood deepens in the seventh and climactic scene, when God announces to John the 48

Dramatic Writings, p. 96. Ibid., p. 115. This passage is based on the Vulgate. Cp. the Advent sermon in St. Bernard on the Christian Year, I, ii, tr. by a Religious of the C.S.M.V. (London, 1954). 48

50

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JOHN BALE

Baptist a new policy toward mankind: "My word being flesh shall set him free". John reviews the history of Israel (Bale loves to recapitulate) and reminds God of the many faithful souls who have done His will. God in reply tells the prophet that he is "predestinate to grace" and will be the herald of Christ, the messenger of the coming kingdom, and the baptizer of the repentant. Then "the Lord touches John's lips with his finger and implants in his mouth the golden tongue" and foretells that the Holy Ghost will descend as a dove and Christ will come to amend the world and proffer to men "most special grace". On this joyful note, the chorus closes with the antiphon "O clavis David". God's Promises is one of the most satisfying of Bale's plays. 50 many traditions meet in it. As in Three Laws, the framework is traditional and owes something to medieval ways of looking at history, at the traditional liturgy, and at the cycle plays. Though he is less aggressively anti-Catholic here than in Three Laws, Bale's bias is Protestant, and he has turned to Reformation theologians and directly to the Bible itself for much of his content. In accordance with their fondness for holy numbers, medieval historians and encylopaedists often divide the history of the world into seven ages. The underlying concept is eschatological, for in the final period they anticipate that God will enter into history and carry out His ultimate intentions. Vincent of Beauvais, 5 1 for example, divides past history into six ages and expects a seventh age when God will institute His own régime and rule through His saints. (Vincent explains that this scheme is analogous to the six days of creation and the days of the week). 52 Vincent's scheme resembles Bale's in several respects. The ages run (1) Adam to Noah, (2) Noah to Abraham, (3) Abraham through Moses to David, (4) David to the Exile, (5) The Exile to the (6) Incarnation through "our own time" to the coming of Antichrist and the Judgment (7) God's Restoration of the World (sometimes called the "World Sabbath"). If Moses (in Age 3) were 51

Speculum Naturale (Nuremberg, 1485), Lib. 33, especially Cap. xxvi. For analogies with Liturgical schemes, see Golden Legend, Temple ed., Vol. I, passim, and Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Glasgow, 1952), especially pp. 257-63, and p. 359.

52

JOHN BALE

55

given a separate period we would have Bale's first five figures. His choice of Isaiah (the prophet of the Messiah) and of John the Baptist (the Forerunner) is appropriate to his particular intention here to lead up only to the Incarnation, in which event he assumed the true purpose of God in history had already been made manifest. Such a concept certainly underlies the seven Advent antiphons which Bale used to close his scenes. These were the so-called "Great O's" used in the vesper services for the seven days before Christmas. They are addressed to Christ under His several scriptural titles and conclude with poetic prayers to the coming Lord. 5 3 In the Carmelite order, the prophecies from Isaiah were recited at the Christmas Vigil services and in the Christmas Masses, so Bale must have sung them many times during his quarter of a century as a Carmelite, but he has translated them into English in line with his principle that worship in a foreign language is lip-service only. 5 4 He has also altered their order slightly to fit them to his historical figures, but otherwise they are exactly as they were (and are) sung in the Catholic Church. They would create in the hearers a mood of worship and anticipation and deepen the emotional inpact of his play. Judged purely as a piece of Biblical exegesis, the Promises is remarkably well thought out. Bale's six Old Testament interlocutors are the six most exactly appropriate figures he could have selected. Their full titles - Adam Primus Homo, Noah Justus, Abraham Fidelis, Moses Sanctus, David Rex Pius, and Essais Propheta show that Bale undestood each of them to be in some special sense a préfiguration of Christ in one or another of His various offices. Adam (First Man) foreshadows His 53

Catholic Encyclopaedia (New. York, 1911), XI, 173, under "O Antiphons". "The seven antiphons to the Magnificat in the ferial office of the seven days preceding Christmas ... a notable feature of Advent offices ... assigned to Vesper Hour because the Saviour came in the evening hours of the world ... They are sung in full before and after the Canticle". 54 There are many other English translations, see The Catholic Encyclopaedia. The Golden Legend contains perhaps the earliest translation, Vol. I. p. 9f. J. M. Neale's paraphrase of the eighteenth-century-related hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", is well known. Bale's order is unlike any of these.

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coming as Second Man to undo the work of the fall. Noah and Abraham are aspects of the faithful man, each representing a fresh start in God's covenant with mankind, each performing in faith an act of obedience which was to be "counted unto him for righteousness". Moses, David and Isaiah prefigure Christ in His offices as priest, king and prophet. The antiphon "O, Emmanuel", is appropriate to Moses, as it was his battle cry, and Stephen's claim that Jesus was the "Second Moses" prophesied in Deuteronomy was one of the blasphemies which led to his stoning. The descent of Christ from David's royal line was prophesied in Isaiah, stressed by Matthew and Luke, and recalled in Revelation. Isaiah's many descriptions of the Servant of the Lord whose salvation was to reach to the ends of the earth made him the prophet par excellence of the Old Testament, as John is the Prophet of the Highest in the New. 55 From the point of view of the history of drama, Bale's Promises is a Protestant version of the medieval prophet plays. There is the same conviction that the Old Testament points forward to Christ and in "dark [i.e. mysterious] shadows" anticipates His coming. The figures Bale used are familiar ones in such a context. Abraham, Moses, David and Isaiah all appear in one or another of the prophet plays: Moses, David and Isaiah all prophesy in Balam and Balak in the Chester cycle, Moses and David appear in the "Townley" Processus Prophetarum, and Isaiah is quoted in the Weavers' Pageant at Coventry; in all three plays the prophets refer back to Adam. The Hegge cycle includes Isaiah and David in its long roll call of prophets and kings, and in all the plays the classic prophecies are quoted as they are in Bale. In the Chester play there is an anticipation of Bale's estrangement-reconciliation motif, for "God is so grym" that Moses is called upon to speak for the people. In spite of this wealth of medieval borrowing, the Promises has been given a very Protestant cast because Bale is using the Bible as Luther used it and emphasizing the doctrines which 66

For the titles see (for Adam) Gen. 2 : 7, 1 : 27; (Noah) Gen. 6; 8; 9; (Abraham) Gen. 12 : 1-4; 15 : 6; (Moses) Exod. 3 : 10; (David) II Sam. 7 : 11-29.

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Luther emphasized. Bale's central theme comes from Romans 4, where St. Paul speaks of the promise to Abraham who "believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness" and who "received the sign of the circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith". 5 6 The section of the epistle where this passage occurs was central in Luther's thinking 57 and contains the memorable assertion "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ". 58 Luther's teaching was a re-emphasis of this side of Pauline doctrine. Salvation was in essence a right personal relationship with God; this was brought about through Christ but anticipated in the promises throughout the Old Testament. Faith in the Eucharist is for Luther (as for Bale in this play) "faith in the divine promises" and he regarded both sacraments as a "mark or memorial of his promise". Luther found analogies for both in God's signs to Noah, Abraham, and Ahaz, and insisted that faith was the operating essential in all cases. 5 9 Tyndale followed him in calling a sacrament "a sign representing such appointment" with God, and by linking the sacraments variously with the signs to Noah and Abraham; to Adam, Abraham and Moses and to Noah, Abraham, and Jacob. In another long and important passage he draws further on Luther in regarding the sacraments as signs and in insisting that the efficacy of the promises depends on the faith of the believer, faith which is the candle to lead us to the Lord. 60 There are other Protestant touches. The words "elect" and "predestinate" are used rather consciously in the new manner; 56

Rom. 4, especially vss. 3, 11. See his commentary on Romans. 58 Rom. 5 : 1; see also 3 : 28 and Gal. 3 : 11. It was the Galatians passage which provided the spark to Luther's conversion experience. B9 The Babylonian Captivity, in Works, Vol. II (Philadelphia, 1943), pp. 202-3, p. 220. The signs are the rainbow and the circumcision, as in Bale and Ahaz' victory, Is. 7 : lOf. (cp. Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, Lib. 33, Cap. xxvi). Calvin's characteristic emphasis on the "seals of the promise" was developed in editions of the Institutes later than the first (1536). 60 Doctrinal Treatises, pp. 409, 10, 401-3, 252-286, 347-385. Other signs mentioned by Tyndale are the Sabbath, the yellow borders on the Israelites' garments, Jeremiah's claims, the signs to Mary, Elizabeth, and the shephexds. 67

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the church (the reformed church, naturally) is God's "elected spouse and faithful congregation", this last word being an especially well-known Tyndalian alternative for "church". But Bale was not a mere imitator. He has worked with the open Bible and his play reflects careful study of both Testaments. Many narrative details have been included under each figure such as references to the fall story, the escape from the Red Sea, the golden calf, and Nathan's chastisement of David for his sin with Bathsheba. He has also paraphrased or summarized several important prophetic or doctrinal passages, notably parts of Isaiah 1 and 3 (in the sixth act), verses from the Fourth Evangelist (in the seventh) and a large portion of the famous "Faith is the substance of things hoped for" statement in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. He was not going to let his audience get away without exposing them to a considerable quantity of scriptural teaching. And though the tone of the play is less controversial than that of Three IMWS, the closing lines are something of a challenge to orthodoxy. Where is now free-will, whom the hypocrites commend? Whereby they report they may, at their own pleasure, Do good of themselves, though grace and faith be absent, And have good intents their madness with to measure! The will of the flesh is proved here small treasure, And so is man's will, for the grace of God doth all. 6 1

John Baptist's Preaching62 is probably the most personal of Bale's surviving plays. Bale, like Nicholas Grimald after him, evinced great interest in John and perhaps identified himself with him to some degree. John appears in no less than four of his plays. I shall presently try to suggest some reasons for this interest. Bale did not formally mark the acts in his play, but it falls naturally into five parts: (1) Prologue, (2) John and his converts, (3) John with the Pharisees and Sadducees, (4) the appearance 61

Dramatic Writings, p. 124-5. Tyndale was especially fond of calling the Catholics "hypocrites". 62 A Brefe Comedy ... of Johan Baptystes ... Preachynge (London? 1538?).

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of God and Christ to John, (5) Epilogue. The opening scenes recall the familiar medieval préfigurations and allegories. Bale as Prologue reminds the audience that as "the kingdom of Christ [begins] to spring", "the law and the Prophets" which were "but shadows and figures" of Christ, are drawing to an end. John begins his preaching with an allegorical interpretation, exactly in the medieval manner, of the valleys and hills verse. "Meekness will arise and pride abate by the Gospel", the idiot will outdo the learned and the poor man the lawyer, "sinners shall exceed the outward saints in grace", and God's rule will make all "straight and plain". 6 3 Furthermore, Bale has turned the scene into a little ceremony which reflects his liking for formal pattern. Each of John's hearers in turn, the Crowd, the Publican, and the Soldier (they are given type character names as in morality plays), is moved by his eloquence to come forward, kneel, and confess his particular sins; each in turn receives John's baptism as "a preparation unto faith in Christ" and is given instructions for his future conduct. The symmetry extends even to the length of the speeches. The total effect is liturgical rather than dramatic. John's concluding address, on the difference between his baptism and Christ's, contains several of the contrasts noted in the Glossa Ordinaria, 6 4 which were very likely homiletic commonplaces. The scene with the Pharisees and Sadducees (expanded from Matthew 3) is more concerned with contemporary quarrels in the manner familiar to us from Three Laws. John is confronted by two sneering representatives of the old order. The Pharisee and the Sadducee despise the "new learning", which smacks of heresy and may undermine their vested interests. They plan to put John out of action by craft. But he is before them to the attack, accusing them of "false expositions" "for your belly's sake". The Sadducee asks a key question which must have been put to many reformers: "By whose authority dost thou teach this 63

See, successively, Luke 3 : 1-14 and parallels, Isaiah 40 : 3f; also Glossa Ordinaria, ed. J-P. Migne, in Patrologiae Latina (Paris, 1844-64), Vol. 114 on Luke 3 : 5. 84 Glossa Ordinaria, on Matt. 3 : 11; cp. also Aquinas' Treatise on Christology, Summa, Vol. 16, p. 156-168, where he makes much the same distinctions.

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new learning?" Avoiding the question, John furiously denounces them as painted hypocrites and sodomites, a generation of vipers who have put their trust in outward righteousness. Neither your good works, nor merits of your fathers, Your fastings, long prayers, with other holy behavers, [sic] Shall you, afore God, be able to justify.65 "Go teach thy old shoes" retorts the Pharisee rudely, and continues to defend his learning and the authority of his forefathers against this newfangled school, while the Sadducee, remarking that this preacher smells not only of heresy but of sedition, claims smugly "We are righteous, well learned, famous, and rich", and, moreover, descended from Abraham. John has recovered his temper. "The nature of these is still like as it hath be", he observes to the audience, adding, Great folly is it of Abraham so to boast; Where his faith is not, the kindred is soon lost. M He himself would not dare to trust in his own righteousness. For all my austerity life and purpose, 67 Worthy I am not hisoflatchets togodly unloose. Thereupon he launches into a vigorous piece of apocalyptic, beginning, "His fan is in his hand: which is God's judgment" and ending with the assertion that "filth and false dissimulation" will be swept away like chaff, while the "perfect Israelites", the "children of faith" will be gathered into God's kingdom. The climactic scene adheres to the Antichrist pattern. Just as John is condemning the followers of false religion to hell, Christ suddenly appears to gather the elect into His kingdom, to be their priest, guide and savior, and to become "the head of [the] whole congregation". Since He has now "become flesh for mine own promise' sake", He desired "to fulfil all righteousness" and to humble himself by receiving baptism of John. He says rather touchingly that he will be as a captain to his soldiers, as a "mate 65 ββ 67

Dramatic Writings, p. 140. Ibid., p. 141; based on Matt. 3 : 11. Ibid., p. 142.

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or brother" to the poor sinner. He raises John, who has knelt before him, and submits to baptism, though John protests, The baptism of me is but a shadow or type; Such is thy baptism as away all sin doth wipe. I give but water; the spirit, Lord, thou dost bring. 6 8

The dove descends and God from heaven speaks the words of approval and insists that "alone it is he that me doth pacify ... hear his monitions". John exclaims on the joyful day and the play ends in a hymn to the Trinity. John Baptist's Preaching offers an original and personal treatment of John the Baptist, which illustrates how misleading it is to refer without further qualification to Bale as writing mystery or miracle plays. 6 9 The medieval plays on the Baptism present an entirely different mood and intention. The only similarities to the Preaching, apart from those based on the common source, are the several exhortations to the crowd to imitate Christ's meekness and holiness. The cycle plays dealt at length with the sacramental significance of the baptism, urging that Christ's submission to the rite confirms it as a sacrament, that the waters of baptism henceforth have a special virtue, that the sacrament destroys the dragon's powers, and that children should be brought to church to receive it. The mysteries also convey John's tremendous sense of awe at being called upon to baptise the Incarnate God. He trembles and quakes, hesitates to touch "His blessed body", and shakes fearfully as He draws near, though he finally carries out the rite using the Trinitarian formula. Bale has cut down hesitation to a gesture and a theological statement that John baptises Jesus, as he says, "by such authority as thy grace hath given to my poor simpleness". Furthermore, all the cycle plays center on the baptism itself, whereas Bale is at least equally interested in John's conversions and controversies. In particular the play gives expression to his lofty conception of the function of the preacher in society. That 88

Ibid., p. 145. Miss McCusker's statement (p. 77) that "the Preaching and Temptation are miracles drawn with practically no change from the New Testament" (emphasis mine) is particularly wide of the mark. βθ

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preacher is God's prophet, one who not merely foretells the future and works signs and wonders, but who (in the days of King Henry or King Herod or the kings of Israel and Judah) fearlessly pours out ethical and religious judgments, crying "Thus saith the Lord". We have seen this already in Bale's treatment of Isaiah in the Promises. Isaiah foretells the Messiah and points to the sign, but he also delivers a passionate sermon 70 on idolatry, false ceremonies, murder, theft, the failure of leadership, and the neglect of the widow and the fatherless, all so close to the Biblical phraseology that none of Bale's usual contemporary references have crept in, except by implication. 7 1 Similarly with John the Baptist. He is the Prophet of the Highest who beholds the sign of the dove; he is also the inspired preacher, whose task is the moral preparation for Christ. "By whose authority dost thou teach this new learning?" asked the Sadducee. The answer is supplied in the epilogue. "Not men's traditions, nor his own holy life" entitled John to a hearing, but the fact that he "preached Christ". This was the seal of his authority, the guarantee of his authenticity. In his play, Bale depicts the Pharisees and Sadducees as hindering the prophet's work; he views this as part of the agelong conflict between prophet and priest which he sees re-enacted in his own day. There is, of course, topical satire in his characterization of the "windbags", who are conceited, hypocritical, crafty and self-seeking. They dislike the "new learning", hinder the true interpretation of the scriptures, encourage "filthy glosses", and fall back on threats and sarcasm when their arguments fail. Worst of all, they deny the validity of John's prophetic message and thus by implication deny Christ. When He appears, they are put to flight and John is vindicated, even as Bale unquestionably hoped to see his "papist" enemies put to flight and his friends vindicated when the day of the Lord should come. 70

Drawn from Is. 1, 3 and Amos 5. Bale even dragged some points from the prophets into Three Laws. Avarice incited the exploitation of widows and orphans which the prophets had condemned, and Evangelium's speech to the vices draws heavily on the major prophets. 71

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Though the anticlerical elements in this picture axe traditional, Bale is again writing in the Protestant tradition. One of the strongest Protestant arguments against the Catholics was the weakness of medieval preaching on the apologetic side. 7 2 In the reformers' view, traditional homiletics centered too much on "works" and conduct and failed to "preach Christ". Luther points this out at the very beginning of his Short Catechism. "Merciful God, what misery have I seen, the common people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine, especially in the villages! and unfortunately many pastors well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teaching". The pastor, he says, should be trained in Bible study, rather than in the Sentences. "How should we prosper, so long as we degrade the Bible, the holy word of God?" The pope's law is read, while "the Gospel is little considered". The primary purpose of the clergy should be to preach the word. 7 3 This attitude raised the prestige of the preacher in Protestant eyes, and of the preacher-prophet John was one convenient symbol. Bale put into The Preaching much of what he felt about prophets, past and present. He knew the prophet might experience isolation and danger. He knew that like Elijah he might cry, "I even, I only am left, and they seek my life to take it away". He knew that he might be despised by his own people, as Jesus was. He knew that, like John in the gospel story, he might suffer imprisonment and death or, like the hero of his play, be accused of sedition or heresy. In all these things he saw mirrored the experiences of the martyrs of his own decade, Bilney, Tyndale, Frith, who in their turn were prophets of a new day and who in their turn would be justified.

72

Even as notable a High Churchman as Dom Gregory Dix has pointed this out, The Shape of the Liturgy, pp. 596-7. τβ See Primary Works (Philadelphia, 1915), pp. 1-3, 232-4. Likewise Tyndale, who says John "went before Christ and preached repentance, that is, he preached the law of God aright and brought the people unto knowledge of themselves, and then sent them unto Christ to be healed"; and "Repentance goeth before faith, and prepareth the way to Christ and the promises", (Doctrinal Treatises), pp. 121, 260.

m OTHER PLAYS OF THE EARLY REFORMATION PERIOD

1. BALE'S CONTEMPORARIES

We know a little about the work of three other Protestant writers in this period, Thomas Wylley, Ralph Radcliffe, and Nicholas Udall. Wylley, another priest who was converted to Protestantism and wrote propaganda plays, came, like Bale, from Suffolk, where he was vicar of Yoxford. We know of his work only from a letter to Cromwell in 1537 1 in which he promises to dedicate to him A Reverend Receiving of the Sacrament. Judging from the characters referred to, which include Christ, St. Paul, "Austyn" [Augustine], The Word of God (compare Bale's Evangelium), and "a nun called Ignoransy", the work was a mixture of allegory, history, and polemic like some of Bale's plays. Wylley laments that he has already made himself impopular with his fellow clergy by an earlier play "against the Pope's counsellors". Undeterred, however, he has now written Rude Commonality, perhaps an attack upon the Pilgrimage of Grace - and is currently working on The Woman on the Rock, in the Fire of Faith, "afining and a-purging in the true Puigatory". Was this an attack on Virgin worship, which was to be "purged" in the fires erf true faith? Or an allusion to Rome as the Scarlet Whore on the Rock? It certainly sounds aggressively anti-Catholic. We do not know whether Cromwell rewarded these efforts or not. Radcliffe and Udall, like so many continental dramatists, were 1

Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, ΧΠ(0, 244.

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schoolmasters. Ralph Radcliffe (c. 1519-1559) studied at both Oxford and Cambridge and in 1538 got the use of a deserted Carmelite priory at Hitchin and started a school. Bale visited him there and was much struck by his theatre ("a beautiful structure") and by his plays, which Bale pronounced "pleasant and profitable", 2 as they cured shyness and encouraged clear speech and good rhetoric - common justifications for school drama. Bale stayed with Radcliffe for several days and was charmed with the "tragedies, comedies, epistles, speeches and laudatory addresses". He lists ten of Radcliffe's plays of which six are Biblical: Job, Jonah, Judith, Lazarus, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Susanna. Most of these subjects were popular on the continent, whence Radcliffe may have received inspiration. There was also a play on John Hus, the Bohemian heretic burned by the Council of Constance; doubtless another strongly anti-Catholic play. Bale also speaks well of the many comedies of Nicholas Udall (1505-1555), who took his B.A. in 1524 at Oxford where, however, his Lutheran sympathies kept him from getting his M.A. for another ten years. He contributed some verses to a pageant in honor of Anne Boleyn in 1533 and was headmaster of Eton from that year until 1541. Like Bale, he produced a play before Cromwell (February 2, 1537/8), for which he received five pounds. Accused of theft and immorality, he left Eton in 1541 and worked on the translation of Erasmus' paraphrase of the New Testament, collaborating for a time with Princess Mary, though the whole project was under the patronage of Catherine Parr. The accusations against him do not seem to have blighted his prospects permanently, nor did he fall a victim to the religk>us changes of the next two reigns, for he obtained two ecclesiastical preferments under Edward and was praised and paid for dialogues, masks, and other entertainments in Mary's court. He was also given some tutoring work in Bishop Gardiner's household. Late in 1554 he was appointed headmaster of Westminster School and died a year later. A man who seems to have had such luck io 3 falling on his feet must have had his share of tact and charm. * 3

Bale, Catalogus, p. 700. I do not find the arguments that Udall was a turncoat convincing. See

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We know from Ralph Roister Doister that he was witty and inventive and had a high sense of the absurd. It is a pity that his early, more serious play, Ezechias, is lost and that we have only such a scanty account of it. The account we have is part of Abraham Hartwell's Regina Literata, a narrative in Latin elegiacs describing Queen Elizabeth's state visit to Cambridge in 1564. The students of King's College produced a revival of Udall's Ezechias as part of a strenuous round of entertainment planned for the queen. The play was probably considered suitable because of its reformist tone and because it complimented Elizabeth's father. For the most likely interpretation of Ezechias (i.e. Hezekiah) is that it celebrates Henry VIII's pro-Protestant phase in the late thirties, by comparing him to the reforming king of Israel (see II Kings 18-19 and the parallel passage in Isaiah 36-9) who destroyed the cults and images and sacred places of his idolatrous people. In 1536 the Ten Articles had certainly modified if not abolished the traditional attitudes to images and saints. Images were not to be censed and worshippers were not to kneel to them. Such "idolatry" was to be put away. Saints were to be reverenced, but not given the honor due to God alone. The Injunctions to the clergy which accompanied the Articles ordered that an English Bible was to be placed in every church and by the next year both Coverdale's and "Matthew's" Bibles were available. The frontispiece to the Great Bible, issued in 1539, shows Henry handing the Bible to Cranmer and Cromwell, and distributing it to the people amid shouts of "Vivat Rex". The injunctions of 1538 had been even more severe against "popish" superstitions than those of 1536: shrines which drew pilgrims were attacked, the machinery inside "miraculous" images displayed, and Becket's shrine in Canterbury despoiled and destroyed. These years, when Protestants were optimistic about further reform, seem the most reasonable period for Ezechias. After the conservative reaction "Udall as a Timeserver". Notes and Queries, 194 (March 19, 1949), pp. 119-121. It seems more likely that he was of an easy-going temperament and saw no need to quarrel with Catholic patronage. Bale, not one to tolerate an apostate, spoke well of Udall in his Catalogus of 1S57 (1,717).

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and Cromwell's fall (1540), the times would not be so propitious for a play about Henry VIII as an imagebreaker.4 We do have Udall's own word that he viewed Henry in this rôle of a "new Ezechias". In his Preface to his translation of St. Luke's Gospel, he wrote, Henry VIII is our Ezechias, by the providence of God deputed and sent to be the destroier not only of al counterfeit relygions ... but also to roote up all Idolatry doen to dead images of stone and tymbers unto God, and committed to other creatures insteade of the Creator, directly against the expresse woordes of the precepts; Thou shalt have no mo goddes but me ... And in this blindness had England still continued, had not God in his infinite goodness and bottomless mercy raised up onto us a new Ezechias to confound al idols, to destroy al hill altars of superstition, to roote up all counterfeit religions, and to restore ... the true worship of God, the syncere preachying of God's word, and the books of the laws, that is of Christ's holy testaments to be read of the people in their vulgar toung. 5

Hartwell's account also bears out this interpretation. The first scene showed Hezekiah's destruction of the cult objeots venerated by the idolators. Altars and shrines where blasphemous offerings have been offered were demolished. The great serpent, the symbol of the Mosaic religion (Bale's "Old Law"), was struck down, false religion destroyed, and true religion ("Verity") set up in its place. Next, two contrasting groups or parties were delineated. The first was conservative, rustic, old-fashioned, and ignorant. "Priests, old women and old men, and the country mobs approve the deeds of the fathers and nothing but the deeds of the fathers. They hate simple worship and unadorned prayers, where there is no noise and no procession". The other party is described as youthful, forward-looking, wise, and sophisticated. Their search for God is founded on reason and pursued with intelligence. Unfortunately the first group - the mob - overturned the altars of 4

Moreover, Udall would have been less likely to write plays after his disgrace in 1541, especially as he would then not have schoolboys available as actors. A. R. Moon identifies Ezechias with the Tragoedia de Papatu, listed by Bale in his Catalogus of 1548; if he is correct, the play cannot be Edwardian. See "Nicholas Udall's Lost Tragedy", ΤLS (April 19, 1928), p. 289. 5 The First Tome of the Paraphrases of Erasmus (London, 1551).

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the true worshippers, prompting Isaiah to appear and prophesy their destruction. This description of the two parties is a very definite reshaping of the narrative in II Kings which merely tells how Judah followed Israel in making images and serving Baal. In the next scene, according to Hartwell, Udall described or showed the fearsome approach of the Assyrian hosts and Rabsaccus (K. J. V. Rabshakeh), Sennacherib's cupbearer, threatening Hezekiah's people. The good king, joined by his people, prayed to God for help. Here the playwright, as far as we can tell, followed the Bible account fairly clearly, but Hartwell does not mention Isaiah's prophecy that the Assyrians will be destroyed. The final scene, however, either showed or narrated this destruction (it is impossible to tell for certain when a scene is acted out or when it is reported). An epilogue wished long life to the queen, a very neat reference to the next chapter (II Kings 20) where it is said that the Lord looked with favor upon Hezekiah's pure and obedient heart and granted him a longer life. The speaker closed by expressing a fear that the "long hours" of sitting while actors "uttered raucous sounds" might have tired her majesty. This fear was realized, for the next evening Elizabeth was much too worn out to attend the Ajax of Sophocles in Latin, and retired to bed, to the great disappointment of the whole university. In spite of the rather vague terms of Hartwell's account, we can discern in Ezechias a general resemblance to Bale's view of history. The king - "our Ezechias", is re-enacting the agelong defence of true religion over false. Again, the "Old Law" or "Old Custom", supported by the superstitious mob, is the enemy against which the new, progressive party has to struggle. Again, the true prophet comforts the believers when they are in danger, and in the final struggle God mysteriously intervenes to assure the triumph of the faithful remnant. The assumptions of Bale's Antichrist plays still hold. 6 6

Of course, many things about this play remain obscure. Hartwell's account is not exact enough for us to be sure whether or not there were more specific political and religious implications, possibly because some df these were less crucial by 1564. Did Udall intend his audience to

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Some of the impulse to polemic drama must have gone after Cromwell's death. But the tradition did not entirely disappear. In 1541 the keeper of the Carpenters' Hall in Shoreditch was in trouble "for procuring an interlude to be openly played, wherein priests were railed on and called knaves". 7 The next year one Moryson 8 suggested to the king that he should devise annual shows which would "declare lively before the people's eyes the abomination and wickedness of the Bishop of Rome, monks, friars, nuns and such like, and declare obedience due to the king". Not long afterwards Bale wrote from abroad to attack the conservative bishops (whom he compares to the wicked Haman in Esther) and to defend the players of interludes who, she says, are bending all their efforts to spread the true faith. At the very end of Henry's reign appeared the lost Old Custom 9 in which a scholar ("Virtue Zele") was evidently opposed by a equate the Assyrians with Rome or with some other power? Was anything about papal exactions intended in the brief reference to the gold and silver tribute? Was there some contemporary parallel to the Egyptian alliance? A reference to the "painted Agathyrsi" is particularly tantalizing. Is it, as in some other Tudor dramatists, an allusion to the painted Picts (i.e. Scots) or is it merely a bit of colorful description? What, in particular, is intended by the brazen serpent whose destruction is celebrated in the opening scenes? Is there, incidentally, an allusion to Jesus' promise (Luke 10 : 19) to the disciples that they will tread down serpents? Grimald makes this promise part of Christ's post-resurrection assurances to His followers. (See on Christus Redivivus, below, p. 88 and on Foxe's Christus Triumphans, p. 106). Could it be the host, the veneration of the cross, the reserved sacrament, or the lifting of the veil covering the cross on Easter? Or perhaps the Mass itself? If so, the whole question of the dating of the play must be reopened, for Henry himself was still serving at Mass in 1539 and crept to the cross on Easter of that year. If Udall wrote Ezechias to please a reform king, it does not seem likely that he would attack any custom or institution which Henry was still supporting. Possibly, of course, the play was rewritten for the production of 1564. Still another possibility (if we disregard Moon's dating) is that it was composed in 1547-8, early in Edward's reign, at the time of the great national debate on turning the Mass into a communion service. Bale knew many members of the radical group and might still have heard of Ezechias in time to include it in his 1548 Catalogus. However, by and large, the 1537-9 period seems the most likely date for the play. 7 Chambers, p. 221. 8 Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry Vili, XVII, 707. 9 Epistel Exhortatorye (Antwerp, 1544), p. 234.

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priest ("Old Blind Custom") in his efforts to convert two gentlemen (Insolens and Diligens) and an apprentice ("Hunger of Knowledge"). The f a m i l i a r opposition of the old traditionalists and the youthful, pious, intelligent, energetic liberals is still being pressed. And we shall find in the next chapter when we discuss Foxe's Christus Triumphans how much vitality the Antichrist legend continued to hold for the more radical reformers.

2.

GODLY

QUEEN

HESTER

Godly Queen Hester,10 a little earlier than the plays we have been considering, probably written sometime during the 1520's, is unlike the mysteries and unlike these Protestant propaganda plays. Although the author was apparently a religious man, apprehensive about the attacks on the monasteries, his main concern is with virtue and vice in high places and his main attack on political greed and ambition. In fact, the play should probably be grouped with other dramatic satires of the period. Some of these were officially inspired and defended the official policy. For example, the lost Heretic Luther, played by Paul's Boys before the king in 1527, evidently mocked Luther, his wife, and his doctrines, while the Release of the Pope (1528) celebrated Henry as the defender of the old faith. Another group, though not critical of the king, is frankly anti-Wolsey, for the Chancellor was widely hated for his vanity, greed, arrogance, and ambition. He had antagonized many powerful groups. The lawyers hated him for his high-handed interference, the clergy for his tyranny over church affairs, the gentry for his successful climb from the ranks, and the Commons for his expensive foreign policy. According to the editor of Magnificence, Skelton began the onslaught: Cloaked Collusion, Counterfeit Countenance, Courtly Abusión, and Crafty Conveyance are aspects of the king's chief minister.11 10

Ed. W. W. Greg in W. Bang's Materialien (Louvain, 1904), Band V. The only extant early edition was published in London by William Pickering and Thomas Hacket, dated 1561. 11 John Skelton, Magnificence, ed. R. L. Ramsay, EETS (London, 1904),

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In John Roo's Lady Public Weal (acted at Gray's Inn in 1526), the ill-advised prince, Lord Governance, is "ruled by Dissipation and Negligence", who in the end are put down when Lady Public Weal is restored. Wolsey took this satire personally and "in a great fury" cast Roo into the Fleet. Among the numerous antiWolsey poems and ballads, we may single out the notorious Rede Me and Be Not Wroth, which not only accused the cardinal of perjury, lechery, avarice, cruelty, extortion, and extravagance, but on the one hand cursed him for aiding the papal Antichrist and burning the New Testament, and on the other taunted him for despoiling the monasteries 12 and for driving a wedge between Henry and Catherine. (Wolsey's suppression of some of the smaller religious houses to help finance his new colleges at Ipswich and Oxford was unpopular in some quarters, especially as his agents were said to be harsh and subject to bribes). All these works throw some light on Godly Queen Hester, which perhaps glances at Catherine of Aragon in its moralizing about the king's consort, probably alludes to the attacks on the monasteries in discussing the threat to the Jews, and almost certainly satirizes Wolsey in the person of Haman. Some elements of the story have been played down, while others have been emphasized and given a new significance. Mordecai, 13 for instance, is diminished in importance and presented as pathetic rather than noble. His loyalty in exposing the treasonous servants is not mentioned and he has not much to do except to give advice to Esther on being a good wife. This sententiousness is characteristic of the play, which opens with a debate between court gentlemen on the virtues which are most desirable in a prince. Some of the changes were clearly made to suggest contemporary applications. For example, the whole Vashti episode - her insolent refusal to come forth at the king's command - is omitted. It is Introduction. Other critics, however, interpret the four abstract characters as aspects of the prince. 12 The bull for this was obtained in 1524. 13 I give the names their modern spellings: they are spelt Hester, Assueras, Mardocheus, Aman in the play.

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implied that Esther is Ahaseurus' first bride. He initiates the search for a consort by announcing that the country is "comfortles for lacke of a Queene", and that he is concerned about the royal succession. The maidens sought out and inspected are not the perfumed concubines of the original, but "virgins pure", candidates for a high and responsible office. Esther wins the king's favor by her "sober, sad, ientill [gentle], meke" demeanor, by her wisdom, and by her mastery of "learninge and littérature". Ahaseurus is impressed also by how seriously she takes the responsibilities of her office. A queen may at times need to counsel the king, and when he is away at war, she will have to act as regent and display all the virtues of a prince. "Knytte both to gether in parfytte charyte" rejoices the king, "we shall quenche all vice and deformitie". The queen's plea for the Jews, threatened with extinction by Haman, is much less dramatic than in the Bible, where the most exciting moment is when Esther decides that she must risk her life for her own people: "If I perish, I perish". No such desperate courage is depicted in the play. Instead the pious queen, quite sure that she will find a way of safeguarding her people, calls for a hymn for the chapel choir, prays to God for help, and calmly makes her request of the king, defending the Jews' hospitality and attacking Haman for extorting money from the Commons in the king's name. Her revenge, however, is very moderate. There is no wholesale slaughter as in the Bible; only Haman is executed. One hardly recognizes the heroic, vengeful Esther of legend in this gentle, pious, merciful creature, partly the author's idea of what a queen should be, perhaps partly suggested by Catherine of Aragon. The Jews are spoken of in terms which sometimes suggest that the author was thinking of the monks of his own day. Haman suggests to the king that the Jews are a danger to the Commonwealth, since they live apart from the rest of the community, go by their own laws, mischievously attack people by their ceremonies, and own too much land. If they could only be got rid of, he says to the king, You shall by that wynne, I dare be bolde, To your treasure .X. thousande pound of golde.

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According to the king's report, Hainan also suggested that the Jews were not hospitable and used their wealth selfishly, for "voluptuous" living. Esther, on the contrary, insists that the Jews are virtuous, keep up hospitality, and care for the poor as they always have. I advise noman to be so bolde The same to dissolve [my emphasis] whatsoever he be.

She later observes that of course if any of them have broken their laws, they should be corrected, for they are God's elected people, for whom the whole realm is better. Since the Jews are saved and Haman is punished for his plot against them, it seems clear that the author is making a moderate appeal for the monks. There is nothing moderate, however, about his attack on the villain of the story. Several details made Haman a useful prototype of Wolsey. The king promoted him (Esther 3 says) to high estate and "set his seat above all the princes that were with him". Haman proved an arrogant ruler, fiercely resenting Mordecai's refusal to bow down and do him reverence. He was extremely proud of his possessions and power, and so vain that he immediately assumed that he must be the man "whom the king delighteth to honor". The reward he anticipated was sumptuous apparel and a parade through the city. Finally, he misled the king, as Wolsey was sometimes accused of misleading Henry. In the play, several hints make clear that the author has this identification in mind. He goes out of his way to call Haman chancellor and "carnifex" - Wolsey was frequently taunted for being a butcher's son, though his prosperous father seems to have had several other lines of business. Haman "hath as many gownes as would serve ten townes" and goes about with "many men waiting on him" - a hit at Wolsey's love of display. Haman's desire for adulation is such that he has absorbed all the "flatteres and al crafty clatterers / That dwell fourte myle about". Also he has "al law est and west ... locked faste" and "yf Aman wynkes, the lawyers shrynkes, / and not dare saye yea nor naye". He knows how to extract fat bribes and fees for favors. Wolsey gloried in his judicial power, but his activities, though they led to great

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improvements in efficiency, were widely resented in the legal profession. His skill in extracting fees and bribes was notorious and his great powers bitterly recognised. Esther says of him Hys pompe and his pryde, so muche is indede That yf he had all, it coulde him not suffice... But to gette moore daylye he doeth devise, The commons he extorteth tyll they belare He takes the profyt and ye [i.e. the king] beare the name.

And Hardy-tardy the jester taunts It is the common worde Aman is a lorde. Aman is of price, And hath perdye all this cuntrie At his rwele and device.

One of his critics gets carried away and even blames Haman for bad harvests, poverty, unemployment, perhaps a hit at Wolsey's relative failure in economic and financial affairs. All this adds up to the general decay of the nation, "wherefore" says the speaker, rather giving the game away, If warre sthould chaunce, eyther wyth Scotland or Fraunce Thys geare woulde not goe ryght.

The attack on the king's favorite has been reinforced by a morality-style passage in which Pride, Adulation, and Ambition claim that because of Haman's powers they are bankrupt of their essential qualities. Pride is poorly arrayed because Haman has bought up all the cloth, and Adulation's profession is "not worth a pease" because Haman is the chief and patron of flatterers. Ambition is equally superfluous in the Commonwealth. He should have been a great clerk, but "syn Aman bare rule" he has no function and must be speechless ("mum"). The three make their wills, leaving to Haman what little power they still have. It is perhaps worth mentioning that Skelton also spoke of Haman as a prototype of Wolsey, if possible in even stronger terms than those used by the author of Hester. The latter called Haman a "ravenous wolf". Skelton, in Why Come Ye Not To Court? alludes to "The wolf of the sea with the cardinal's hat",

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a prelate who ought to be hanged on "the gybbet of Baldock". This last phrase occurs again in Speak, Parrot, and an allusion in Mandeville's Travells makes it clear that the gibbet of Baldock was an equivalent for Hainan's gallows.14 All these details taken together suggest strongly that Godly Queen Hester was a bold personal satire on the hated Chancellor. It remains to date the play. The defence of the monasteries indicates a point after 1524, when Wolsey initiated the dissolutions of the smaller foundations. His depredations of money, plate, and books are mentioned with disfavor even in the Protestant Rede Me. If the picture of the pious consort of Ahaseurus was based on Catherine of Aragon, it was probably drawn before the Spring of 1527, when Henry openly sought for an annulment of his marriage. Even before that, though, Wolsey was widely believed to be hostile to Catherine, as Haman is hostile to Esther in the play, and to have frequently deceived his master as Haman is said to have deceived Ahaseurus. Esther even suggests that the king may be blamed for his minister's greed, The commons he extorteth till they belarne, He takes the profit and ye bear the blame.

The years 1524-26 certainly saw several events which added to Wolsey's unpopularity. One was the cynically titled "Amicable Grant", really an arbitrary loan forced on property owners. Both laity and clergy felt anything but amiable about it and Henry had to intervene to get it withdrawn, but not before it had made many enemies for Wolsey. In the same year, 1524, Wolsey's appointment as papal legate was renewed for life. He had greater power than any previous English churchman - too much power, since he kept it largely in his own hands and overrode subordinates.15 In 1521 14

See William Nelson, John Skelton, Laureate (New York, 1939), pp. 175-177. 16 G. R. Elton in England under the Tudors, p. 86, has an interesting passage on Wolsey as a churchman: "... it would have been difficult to find a better example of most of the glaring abuses in the Church than the cardinal himself. He exemplified pluralism at its worst: he always held at least one other bishopric in addition to York, and - most improperly of all - he, a secular priest, was abbot of St Albans. No one

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as the self-styled defender of the poor, he appointed (as in 1517— 18) a commission to enquire into enclosures, which were causing unemployment and hardship. Some destruction of enclosures was carried out, which only made Wolsey more unpopular with the landowners. Sometime between 1524 and the end of 1526, then, seems the most likely date for the play. We have no way of knowing under what auspices or circumstances the play was produced - if indeed it was produced. Godly Queen Hester is unique among the anti-Wolsey satires in using a Biblical story to make its point. It is also unusual in another respect: it was written by someone loyal to the old faith. In the twenties this is not surprising; but the student of scriptural plays throughout the whole century will find only one other extant play unquestionably by a Catholic. 16 One of the curiosities of Biblical drama in the Tudor period is that it is almost invariably Protestant. The combination of Biblical drama and morality features, exemplified in Hester, were to prove a valuable weapon in the hands of the Protestant propagandist of the next decade.

could have excelled him in non-residence: he never visited the seats of any of his sees, and until his fall he never attempted to deal with their affairs. As for simony, his income from improper bribes and patronage was large and notorious. No priest was richer or displayed the fact more proudly. Celibacy sat lightly on the man who had probably several daughters and certainly one son whom he promoted rapidly to some valuable benefices in his extreme youth (nepotism and the ordination of minors) ... His legateship ... enabled him to exercise a supreme authority over the Church in England, and this he intended to exploit. With vigour and success he superceded the powers of others - abbots, bishops, archbishops, and convocation. His agents carried out visitations of some small monasteries, reported unfavourably, and dissolved them ... His attack on the liberties and independence of the episcopal bench went much further still. H e permitted long vacancies on the deaths of bishops, reserving the profits to himself. He encouraged the appointment of foreigners who never visited their titular sees or took care of their charges; Wolsey then paid them a fixed stipend and administered the temporalities to his own advantage". te Jephte, by John Christopherson; see Ch. IV.

rv ENGLISH HUMANIST DRAMA IN GREEK AND LATIN

Most of the plays of the forties are attempts to initiate serious classical drama, as it was understood in the Renaissance, and to add lustre to the form by using Biblical subject matter. English university dramatists who essayed this form were building on a European dramatic tradition already a generation old. About 1510 Textor in France and Macropedius in the Netherlands adapted the parable of the Prodigal Son in a dialogue with tags, incidents, and motifs from Plautus and Terence. They thus initiated what was to become one of the most popular genres of the century - the Biblical comedy in classical form, often called Christian Terence after the more respectable of the two Roman comedians. In Germany and the Netherlands in particular, but in other countries as well, humanist schoolmasters concocted dramatic versions of the stories of the Prodigal (the subject of dozens of plays),1 the Lost Sheep, the Raising of Lazarus, Judith, Esther, Susanna, Abraham and Isaac, and other suitable narratives. The pattern of all these stories was similar. The protagonist was involved in suffering, but in the end was reconciled, rescued, saved, or forgiven. "Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning" might have been their text. The thin line between tragedy and comedy in these plays had long been recognized. According to Donatus and other ancient critics studied in the Renaissance, tragedy should be based on history, comedy on fiction. Technically, then, plays drawn from scripture should 1

See Hugo Holstein, Das Drama vom Verlorner Sohn (Halle, 1880).

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be tragic, not comic. 2 But theological considerations tended to modify this principle. Divine providence operated to turn suffering and sorrow to joy. The words of Joseph to his brothers after their reunion bring out very clearly that the hardships he had endured were part of God's design for him and his brothers and for their children's children. "Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life ... and to preserve you a posterity in the earth". The Joseph plays by Crocus, Frischlin, Macropedius, and others bring out this point very clearly, and most of the subjects named above were similarly treated. God's providence guides men. The terms used to describe this drama - tragi-comoedia, comoedia nova, comoedia sacra, tragoedia nova, fabula sacra - indicate that these dramatists were conscious that they were developing something new and, it was assumed, better than what they found in the Greek and Roman plays. Their works were "sacred" in a special sense. They used stories from Holy Scriptures and carried a burden of theological lessons. "I do not bring you Plautus or Terence, all of whose plays are fictions, untrue, profane, ludicrous, and deceitful", wrote Crocus in the preface to his Joseph, "but I bring one that is true, sacred, serious, chaste, and modest". 3 Biblical tragedy appeared only later, which is not surprising considering the difficulty of the form and the problem of combining the tragic sense of life with the Judaeo-Christian world-view. Possibly some apprehension of this difficulty deterred earlier humanists, even after Erasmus' Latin translation of Hecuba and Iphigenia (1506) provided them with models. The first essays in what has been called Christian Seneca are George Buchanan's Baptistes and Jephthes, performed at Bordeaux in the early 1540's Later came Schoepper's Johannes Decollatus (1546) and Ziegler's Samson (1547). Biblical tragedy seems never to have been as popular as tragicomedy. 3

Parables were regarded as fiction and therefore never created any problem. 3 Some authors did seek the justification of classical precedent in Terence's Heauton Timorumenos and Plautus' Captivi.

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Biblical plays were at the height of their popularity between 1536 and 1556. In those years there were sixty Biblical dramas in Latin alone, besides two popular anthologies 4 and scores of vernacular imitations. After 1560 the score drops to about ten a decade. Thus the English dramatists who were writing around 1540-1551 were writing at the height of the continental fashion. Their work was preceded by a period of interest in classical and neoclassical drama at the English Universities. Magdalen College, Oxford, saw Hoker's Piscator and a Thersites, perhaps Textor's, by 1537. St. John's College, Cambridge, saw Artour's Microcosmos and Mundus Plumbeus, and, in 1536, Plutus in Greek - perhaps under the influence of Ascham, who had been teaching Greek in Cambridge for some time. He was made Reader in Greek at St. John's in 1538 and claimed that in five years he made Sophocles and Euripides as famous as Plautus. Later, in The Schoolmaster (1566) he recalled that he, Thomas Watson, John Cheke, and others "had many pleasant talks together in company comparing the precepts of Aristotle's and Horace's De Arte Poetica with examples of Euripides, Sophocles and Seneca". 5 He mentions his friend Watson's "excellent tragedy" Absalom which he thought alone with the great Buchanan's Jephthes "could abide the true touch of Aristotle's precepts and Euripides' examples". 6 This play has recently been identified with the manuscript Absalom in the British Museum. 7 The play seems to have been performed at St. John's about 1540. Within a few years John Christopherson, also of St. John's, wrote his Greek tragedy, Jephthe. Oxford, too, saw some original Biblical plays early in the forties, but she owed them to a Cambridge man, Nicholas Grimald, a graduate of Christ's and a contemporary of Ascham, Watson, and 4

Comoedia et Tragoedia (Basle, 1540) and Dramata Sacra (Basle, 1540). Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, ed. W. Aldis Wright (Cambridge, 1904), p. 274. 8 Ibid., p. 278. For Buchanan's play, see The Sacred Dramas of George Buchanan, tr. Archibald Brown (Edinburgh, 1906). 7 See John Hazel Smith, "A Humanist's Trew Imitation": Thomas Watson's Absalom, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature (Urbana, 1964). B

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Christopherson. He may have attended Ascham's lectures on classical literature. Four Biblical plays by him were performed in the early years of the decade, two of which survive. John Foxe, the martyrologist, was also writing Latin dramas at this time. His Christus Triumphans, an Antichrist play, published in 1551, has affiliations with Bale's work and with Kirchmayer's Pammachius. Even when Grimald's last plays are listed, the body of English humanist drama in the classical tongues is very small. The complete list reads as follows: Date

Author

Title

ca. 1540 Grimald

Christus

ca. 1540 Watson

Absalom

ca. 1544 Christopherson

Jephthe

Redivivus

1540's

Grimald

Christus Nascens

1546

Grimald Grimald

Protomartyr Archipropheta

1551

Foxe

Auspices

Publisher

Brasenose, Oxford St John's, Cambridge Trinity, Cambridge Merton, Ox. or Christchurch, Oxford

Gymnicus, Cologne, 1543 MS.

Christchurch, Oxford Christus Triumphans Oxford? Performed Trinity College, Cambridge.

MSS. (Lost)

(Lost) Gymnicus, Cologne, 1548 John Oporinus, Basle, 1556

Bale lists Grimald's nativity play as a comedy and Grimald himself calls Christus Redivivus a tragicomedy. Christus Triumphans, in a strange way, is also a tragicomedy. The other plays may fairly be regarded as attempts at tragedy. The four authors we know, Watson, Christopherson, Grimald, Foxe, were all men of some note in University circles. Watson translated part of the Odyssey, and Christopherson published Latin versions of Philo, Ausebius, and Apollinaris. Both men were masters of colleges under Mary, Watson of St. John's and Christopherson of Trinity. Grimald, who for some time held a lectureship in rhetoric at Christ Church, translated Hesiod, Zeno-

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phon, Plato, Cicero, and Horace, besides issuing commentaries on Vergil's Georgics and Eclogues and on Terence's Andria. Foxe lectured in logic at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1539-46, and produced an edition of the Anglo-Saxon gospels and two not very successful textbooks. His important work was to come later. All four men took sides in the religious controversy, the lines of which hardened after Cromwell died and Bale fled in 1540. Watson and Christopherson never wavered from the Roman Catholic side: both held bishoprics under Mary and both defended their faith in the early days of Elizabeth. Both died in prison. Grimald's record displays no such strength of mind. He was (after 1551) a Protestant preacher and chaplain to Ridley, but during the Marian persecution he seems to have recanted to save his skin, even if he was not the "Judas" his modern biographer thought him. 8 Foxe got out of England with the help of Thomas Lucy in 1554; the rest of his life is part of Protestant history. The dramatic work of these men was influenced by their religious views in different degrees: Christopherson's not at all, Grimald's somewhat, Foxe's intensely. Watson's Absalom was (like Jephthe) purely academic and nonpartisan; Catholics (as far as their dramatic works go) were not on the defensive until much later and Ascham, though only a "good-natured Protestant", would not have approved of obvious polemic in an Aristotelian tragedy. Grimald and Foxe, on the other hand, were intimately linked with the Reformist Party, and it is not surprising to find some flavor of Protestant propaganda in their writing. Both, incidentally, were friends of Bale and both were affected by the climate of opinion which he had a share in creating.

1. THOMAS WATSON'S ABSALOM

The authorship of Absalom of the Stowe MS. 957 has for sometime been the subject of conjecture. Chambers 9 was inclined 8

See L. R. M. Merrill, The Life and Poems of Nicholas Grimald (New Haven, 1925), pp. 36-51. 9 Medieval Stage, Π, 438.

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to identify the play with Watson's Absalom mentioned by Ascham, but Boas, in his University Drama repudiated this identification on the grounds of the author's "tasteless rhetoric and monotonous versification".10 Many historians of the drama followed Boas, except for T. W. Baldwin, who did not think Boas's objections were valid. Recently John Hazel Smith has translated and edited the play and demonstrated beyond doubt that the manuscript is in Watson's own hand. Absalom is a well-constructed Senecan melodrama, based on Absalom's ill-fated revolt against David, recounted in II Samuel, 13 : 1-18 : 33. A more appropriate Biblical subject for a Senecan drama would be hard to find. Parallels to all the main incidents may be found in Seneca - the blood-feud which works itself out within a noble family, the exile who nourishes resentment, the hypocritical reconciliation masking revengeful purpose, the suicide of a highly placed personage, and the political ramifications of an emotional situation. The blood-feud aspect of the narrative is given more prominence than in the original story, where both to the chronicler and to the characters involved its obligations were a matter of course. Watson showed talent in choosing and arranging his material. Except for brief appearances of Shimei, the priests, Abishai and several messengers, the action is carried by only five characters, Absalom, Achitophel, David, Joab, and Hushai (who is treated as identical with the Cushite), and is divided into twelve wellmarked scenes. The play begins late in the narrative, with the meeting between Joab and Absalom at the end of chapter 14. Earlier events and portions of the narrative which contribute to our knowledge of the principals without being essential to the revenge plot are omitted or referred to later at appropriate points. Examples are the seduction of Tamar (Chapter 13), Absalom's promises to the malcontents (Chapter 15 : 1-6) and David: the assignment of tasks to Hushai and the priests (Chapter 15 : 32-37). Some very spectacular scenes, among them Absalom riding in his carriage with fifty men before him, the battle in the forest of 10

Thomas Watson, A Humanist's "Trew Imitation": Thomas Watson's "Absalom", Illinois Studies in Language and Literature (Urbana, 1964).

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Ephraim, and the final mishap to Absalom are not dramatized but reported. The play opens with a debate between Joab and Absalom regarding the latter's murder of his brother Ammon. Absalom insists it was his right as a pious man to revenge the insult to his sister, while Joab insists that the king had the right to mete out justice in such a case. He reminds Absalom of David's clemency to him. Absalom sulkily maintains that David's harshness is unfatherly and arrogantly orders Joab to see that a meeting between him and his father is arranged. Without pause the dramatist moves to the conspiracy between Absalom and Achitophel. The reconciliation with David is not represented, but Absalom complains of his father's false kisses and, raging hysterically, swears to kill him. Achitophel hesitates at first to join the rebel, but soon convinces himself that his treachery is justified, since only a strong, wise man like himself can ensure stability in the state. A messenger opens Act II by describing to the Chorus how "mad Absalom", the demagogue, flattered and lied himself into the favor of the mob and now promises rich spoils to his followers. Next David, alone, prays in the words of Psalm 3, traditionally subtitled "A psalm of David when he fled from Absalom" and commencing "Lord how are they increased that rise up against me!" He prepares to flee from Jerusalem, but here the author has added a debate between David and Joab on the wisdom of this course. Joab argues that Absalom is beyond reform and that David, recollecting God's support of him in the past and his triumph over Goliath, should stay in Jerusalem and fight it out with the rebels. David, however, insists on leaving, apparently assuming that "that monster" Achitophel is at the bottom of the plot and that given time Absalom will repent of his part in it. Now Shimei curses and stones David, calls him a bloody and greedy murderer, and hopes he will be torn limb from limb and "scattered to the fetid winds". In Act III Absalom enters Jerusalem in triumph, still cursing his father with unabated ferocity: "May this sword rend his hated entrails and may he spit out thick blood". Here again the dramatist cannot resist a debate, and Absalom and Achitophel argue

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over details of their policy, Absalom finally deciding to insult his father by taking over the royal harem. In the pause which follows, Hushai explains his plan to trick Absalom The debate between the rival counselors is the most effective scene in the play, since the author, who had considerable talent in dialectic, kept the argument going brilliantly, added several points to those mentioned in the Bible, and intensified the suspense. Absalom is characteristically won over by an appeal to his vanity and lust for blood. While Hushai hastens to make contact with the priests, Absalom grumbles at his lazy, inefficient soldiers and dwells in disagreeable detail on various schemes for torturing his father to death. In a still longer soliloquy, the slighted Achitophel deplores his fruitless and (he now sees) impious treachery, and determines to commit suicide rather than face the king he has betrayed. As David watches the battle in the final act, his one thought is the safety of his son for whom he prays with touching depth of feeling. As the two messengers return from the battle with news of victory, the author has tried to employ reversal by making the first one sound wildly joyful, the second more foreboding. Unfortunately, he has largely dissipated the effect of this contrast by prolonging the second speech to almost 100 lines by an account of the rival forces, the variety of weapons employed, and the gruesome and bloody deaths on the battlefield. David not unnaturally insists, "I would rather hear about my son", a request which is fulfilled only after the speaker has painted an elaborate wordpicture of the fatal oak tree. David grieves for his son in a heartrending lament, as in the Bible; until Joab sternly bids him remember the attention and gratitude he owes to his loyal soldiers. Thus the play closes on the theme of the king's duty to the state. The Senecan inspiration of the subject matter, themes, and external form of Absalom has been amply illustrated. The same influence may be traced in the handling of the story, the treatment of the characters, and matters of style. The author has cut and streamlined the Bible story, much as Seneca simplified Euripides* Heracles and other plays, by eliminating inessential detail and

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incident in favor of clear sequence, sharp character contrast, and parallel situations. Joab is contrasted with Absalom, Hushai with Shimei, Absalom with David, Hushai with Achitophel; David's well-marshalled army with Absalom's haphazardly armed rebels, Absalom's perfidy and hate with David's trust and love. The author has even written in a parallel to Achitophel's proposal that Absalom should take his ease while he, Achitophel, seeks out David and destroys him, for Joab similarly proposes that he should attack Absalom while David stays in Jerusalem. The same desire for melodramatic effects is at work in the delineation of character. The most obvious traits of the three chief persons have been exaggerated so that Absalom is more ferocious, David more tender, and Achitophel more subtle and more complex than in II Samuel. Even Hushai is a bit more obvious about his double-crossing. Absalom is unmistakably the central character, for he appears or is the subject of discussion in ten of the twelve scenes while David is kept out of sight until the end of the second act. This is in contrast with the Biblical account which sees Absalom from David's point of view. There he is pictured as a disloyal, scheming, but much loved son, a rational creature whose ambitions, however deplorable, are not inexplicable. In the play, Absalom's motivation is not so clear. On the shallow pretence that his father is hypocritical in treating him kindly, he whips himself into a revengeful fury, boasts that he is "a fire fanned by the wind", and rages like Medea or Atreus, though with much less excuse. Neither Joab nor Achitophel are taken in by these histrionics, the latter reminding him sharply that deeds will impress his followers more than words. Scornful of his men, vain of his own prowess, and incapable of taking good advice, Absalom fails to consolidate his position or to arm his soldiers properly, wasting his energy in ranting speeches to the effect that his hatred for David will outlive the seasons and stand firm even if the wolf turns lamblike. His savage hatred and his zest for torture are expressed in such repulsive detail that they excite only disgust at a diseased mind. Perhaps this is just the effect Watson intended, for the other

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characters have been carefully and intelligibly motivated. Early in the play their opinions and dispositions are indicated, and their later actions are consistent with these. For example, Joab's killing of Absalom in disobedience to David's express command is in line with his earlier assertion that Absalom is not worth saving; Achitophel's opening soliloquy on the disturbed state of the nation squares with his later decision to stoop to treason in order that he may be the one to put things right; David's unchanging love for Absalom is apparent throughout. Such careful psychological plotting is characteristic of Senecan drama, whence the present author may have learnt it. Achitophel is an entirely believable character and a familiar political type, the would-be dictator who in his greed for power rationalizes his treachery as an act of public duty. The king is old, he tells himself, power must soon pass to another and who else could so well be the force behind the throne of the volatile prince? Yet when he fails, he is realist enough to analyze the situation and to recognize his mistake: the rebellion will fail and he will be disgraced. Calmly he debates the morality of suicide, decides to destroy himself, and by a curious obsession with retribution chooses a method appropriate to his treachery, the use of a rope which will "choke the channel through which the word of treason passed". While Absalom has been made more barbarous, David has been softened for contrast. He is less of a statesman than in the Bible, where he has no illusions about Absalom and never hesitates to quell the dangerous rebellion at whatever cost in personal grief. In the play he is a weaker person who trusts Absalom throughout, casts the blame on Achitophel, and wavers in his strategy in the hope that his son may be reformed. The Biblical picture of the old king who loves his bad son but is forced to destroy him is really a more effective and moving one. About the only religious touch in this violent tragedy is the emphasis on David's piety. The king recites psalms, prays before every decision, regards the revolt as the promised punishment for his adultery with Bathsheba, and acknowledges that he as well as his son has sinned in the sight of God. This devout note is not, however,

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carried out to the end of the play, where Joab's closing speech dwells on good statesmanship and on the inevitability of Absalom's death. Every stichomythic dialogue, every rhetorical address betrays the Senecan origin of the style. Argument is sententious and epigrammatic. Absalom: Absalom: Joab: Joab:

He who casts aside his son must be evil. The unfortunate father bore an impious son. A pious man must avenge his sister's rape. It is the Icing's right to punish the wicked.

Digressions on morality and politics, nature imagery, elaborate similes, and, inevitably, sensational detail ornament the speeches. For instance, Achitophel at various points discusses the right of rebellion against an inefficient ruler, the folly of leniency towards enemies, the costliness of procrastination, and the rights and wrongs of suicide; David meditates on the justice of retribution and the responsibilities of fatherhood and kingship. Much more than Grimald, this author makes use of the nature imagery in which Seneca delighted, and wherever possible scatters allusions to the dew at nightfall, the stars, the ocean, birds, flowering plants, and, of course, the dense forest which was the scene of the hero's death. The messenger's account of the rival armies includes a description of both hosts in epic style, together with a catalogue of their weapons and armor. Similes such as Achitophel's comparison of Absalom's rage to the Red Sea engulfing Pharaoh's hosts are common. Bitter epithets and gory and violent descriptions are abundant. Shimei calls David monster, animal, bloody creature, "voracious homicide", and expresses the desire to see him torn limb from limb, eaten by dogs and ravens, tossed into the hungry sea or to the stinking winds. "May black shadows smother you", he shouts, "fire, water, air, and earth reject you, tears drown you, and hunger make you tremble Would that avenging horses might tear your body, or a violent thunderbolt rip up your limbs". Absalom's ill wishes toward David are expressed with similar ferocity. The author has another opportunity for sensational effects in the final act, where dismembered

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limbs fly about the battlefield, "obscene gore overflows on the warm ground", and Absalom is slowly and painfully done to death. Here is the real "Senecan horror" of Hercules Furens, Medea, Phaedra, and Thyestes, later exploited so successfully by Kyd and his imitators. Absalom, with all its trappings, reflects it, more fully than Baptistes or Archipropheta, more effectively than Gorboduc, and almost as successfully as The Spanish Tragedy.

2. GRIMALD'S CHRISTUS

REDIVIVOS

Like Bale, Grimald began by reworking traditional material. The earliest subject of liturgical drama, the Resurrection, continued to be a favorite theme throughout the Middle Ages, no less than six English dramatic treatments surviving. Grimald, who was born in Lincolnshire, could easily have seen the Corpus Christi Cycle at Lincoln. He was certainly acquainted with the medieval tradition in some form, possibly the apocryphal gospels which were often the source of additions to the scriptural narratives. We know that he also studied the Gospel accounts with some care, for he often corrects the medieval tradition in accordance with them; also he refers in his preface to certain contradictions which he had trouble in harmonizing. Furthermore, his prefatory comments and his arrangement of his material indicate that he knew and admired the work of neoclassical dramatists on the continent and shared their critical theories. Theirs was the paramount influence on his earliest dramatic experiment. 11 Like them he was conscious of a purpose higher than the imitation of the classics. Christian subject matter was superior to pagan and would have a more moral and uplifting effect on the audience. We have noticed already Crocus' claim that his Joseph was "true, sacred, serious, chaste and modest", in contrast with the deceitful and profane works of Plautus and Terence. Another continental writer, Sterk, maintained that his Homulus 11

For a full account of the development of the theories of these men, see Marion Herrick, Tragicomedy (Urbana, 19SS), Chs. I and II, and especially pp. 22-31.

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(1536) contained no "shameful seductions of love, nor ... infamous luxury, nor the allurements of love-making that you may find in Terentian and Plautine comedies, but rather a Christian topic, morally treated". Macropedius, likewise, claimed that his Hecastus displayed no love scenes, pimps, or wantons. Similarly, Grimald boasted that in Christus Redivivus he made use of "... no frivolous epigrams, no jokes about love, no silly talk, no mimes, no low class conversation, no Atellan comedy, no tavern scenes, none of the strange tales of heathen drama, which contribute nothing to the formation of character, to sound learning, or to the increase of God's praise". 12 Instead he chose the most uplifting of all subjects, "the Savior and Redeemer ... Jesus Christ ... the picture and living portrayal of our whole salvation". The central purpose of such a play is to create faith, "For he who clearly perceives that Christ was brought back from death and for our sins made atonement and who by the spirit of this same Christ is renewed to a holier life, he shall live in strong and unshaken faith, fearing nothing". He may even "overcome his vile mass of faults so that having put away sin, he may live with his Christ for God alone". Grimald also borrows continental terminology to define the nature of his play. On the title page he refers to Christus Redivivus "a new and sacred tragicomedy" and in the preface he refers to it as a "sacred comedy" in which happiness and misery may alternate so long as the last act "adapts itself to delight and joy". With this flexibility in emotional tone, Grimald associated a reasonably free handling of the unities, pointing out that "the scenes were not so far apart but that they could be reduced to one stage setting" and that in allowing the action to cover several days he was following the precedent set by Plautus' Captivi. The action begins on a high emotional note with a passionate outburst of grief from the Magdalene. She curses the "unjust Jews", weeps until she can weep no more, and closes in a lyric expression of tenderness and hope: 12

Merrill, p. 103. Merrill's text is accompanied by a parallel English translation. I have felt free to amend this where necessary.

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Farewell my Glory, loved so dearly, farewell for a time, but not for eternity. Thou art not now wholly destroyed; the stars possess thy heavenly part, the ground thy earthly part, which will live again. They shall live; the bones we imagine dead shall live. Meanwhile, rest gently here, my Christ, rest gently here.13 Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus reprove her for the violence of her grief. Caiaphas itemizes the priestly case against Jesus and gloats over His crucifixion, but is relieved when Annas leads in four soldiers, whom he directs to keep a sharp lookout. Each soldier boasts of his competence, but the last one has hardly finished when Cacodemon announces that Christ is upsetting the underworld, and the spirits of the blessed acclaim Christ, who has come to lead them from the realms of shadow. Terrified by the earthquake and lightning, the soldiers sink unconscious as Christ comes rejoicing in His triumph over death. Here the dramatic tension is lost as an exchange of anecdotes about Christ's miracles precedes Magdalene's "Who shall roll away the stone?" Her encounters with the angels and with the supposed gardener are both marred by over-strained emotionalism and inadequate theatrical power. John's unsporting remarks that he knew he could outrun "that old man" (Peter), that he will now get the first look into the tomb, are also unfortunate. After a farcical scene in which his companions struggle to awake the sleepy Dromo, the soldiers report to the anxious priests. In a scene in hell, Cacodemon addresses the "chiefs and princes of Tartarus, powers of Acheron", urging them to join their "old friends" the priests to defeat Christendom. Alecto is sent to tempt the priests to bribe the soldiers not to spread the story that Christ has risen. The final act consists largely of debate. Some of the disciples doubt, others unite in trying to convince them. Cleophis plays a surprisingly large part here. All the arguments for the Resurrection are marshalled, and the Savior's appearances at Jerusalem and on the road to Emmaus are recounted. Thomas in particular insists that he will never believe until he sees the wounds them13

Ibid., p. 121.

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selves. Suddenly Christ appears, convinces Thomas of His reality, and charges the disciples to preach the Gospel to all the nations. The Epilogue exhorts the audience to have faith and rejoice in the promise of salvation. How much of this is tradition? Certain features demonstrate Grimald's acquaintance with legendary accretions. He follows them in using the three Marys, in building up Mary Magdalene as the figure of greatest emotional theatrical appeal, and in putting into her mouth the long grief-stricken speech with its anti Semitic touches. As in most of the cycle plays, Nicodemus and Joseph comfort the women and scold them a little for their excessive weeping. Second, Grimald uses the boasting soldiers, a half-comic, half-ironic episode found in all the cycles. The Chester and Hegge plays, like Grimald's, have four men. However, Grimald has given his soldiers classical names and has individualized them by varying their boasts (one claims strength, one intellectual quickness, and so on) and by making comic use of Dromo, the heavy sleeper. Third, he may have borrowed from some earlier source Christ's speech of triumph after He has risen, for which there is no foundation in the Bible. The one in the Hegge play is particularly elaborate. The equivalent speech in Christus Redivivus is shorter and more Pauline. There are noteworthy omissions. The liturgical pattern of the women's laments has been discarded. Cleophis has been characterized almost as fully as the Magdalene and plays an important role in the debate over the Resurrection. Allegorizing is avoided. There are no passages on the armor of Jesus (as in the York play) or on Jesus as the gardener of the human soul (as in Christ's Burial and Resurrection). There is not so much as an allusion to the Virgin Mary, who is prominent in Christ's Burial and in the Hegge and York cycles. Unlike earlier writers, Grimald does not employ her either as a pathetic figure or as a commentator on her Son's power. The suppression of Mary's traditional rôle seems to be a deliberate Protestant feature. Finally, although he has much to say of the underworld, he does not mention Purgatory. At three points in particular, Grimald's treatment is revolutionary. Most of the medieval plays have elaborate and pictures-

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que accounts of the Harrowing of Hell. In the York cycle, for instance, Adam, Eve, Moses, Isaiah, Simeon, and John the Baptist recall how they foreshadowed Christ, a beam of light announces His coming and frightens the devils, Satan is bound by Michael, and David and John the Baptist welcome Christ and praise Him. All the cycles have something of the sort, but Grimald has only twelve lines in which the souls of the blessed (here anonymous) rejoice while Cacodemon shrieks. The brevity of Grimald's version accords with the New Testament (Matthew 22 : 52), which merely says that "many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were raised". Grimald's comic embellishment of the soldiers is practically the only point in which his scenes involving the watch resemble the medieval ones. He has made four changes. He omits Pilate altogether. The watch is set, then, not by Pilate, as in all the cycles, but by the priests, as in Matthew 27 : 65. The soldiers do not fall asleep, as in most of the older plays, 14 but are stunned by fear and by the lightning and earthquake, as in Matthew 28 : 2-4. They report not, as traditionally, to Pilate, but to the priests, 15 as in Matthew 28 : 11. Finally, in a scene for which there is no precedent either in the Gospels or the medieval plays, the notion of bribing the soldiers to keep silence is put into the priests' heads by Alecto the fury, who is sent on this errand by Cacodemon. The priests are diabolically inspired. In adding this touch, Grimald was influenced by the continental Christus Xylonicus (1529) by Barptolomaeus, who has Alecto tempt Judas to betray Christ. 16 The net effect of these changes is to throw the emphasis on the villainy of the priests who appear, even more than in the Bible, as selfish, hypocritical, and dishonest schemers. As Cacodemon made it clear 14

It is not clear whether they sleep in the Chester plays or not. They hear angelic songs and see a light from heaven. 16 In the cycle plays the priests are present, but do not speak until Pilate has chastised the men. 16 Beyond doubt Grimald knew this play, for he began his own exactly where it ended, borrowed the names of his four soldiers, and even used the title of the play in a passage of his own. See Frederick S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1914), pp. 28-9.

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early in the play that the priests are the old and "most faithful friends" of the devils, it is clear that Grimald is depicting the familiar league between the hierarchy and Hell. In less exaggerated fashion he echoes the views of Kirchmayer and Bale. Devotees of the open Bible were not, of course, exclusively Protestant, but in view of Grimald's closeness to Matthew in his treatment of the soldier sequence, it is worth looking at the passage in the dedication where he defends the reading of the scriptures, even by young people "in the callow years of undeveloped judgement". For the untutored he recommends the use of Erasmus' Paraphrase and reminds possible critics that St. Paul thought the youthful Timothy worthy of preaching the Gospel. 17 Perhaps he was a little sensitive about his own youth. The last speech of the play is a thoroughly evangelical exhortation. Christ urges His followers: Go therefore, into all the world, for everywhere you shall be messengers of heavenly things. If anyone believes that I died for him, and for him lived again, there will be no need of antiquated ceremonies, of* burnt offerings and sacrifices. He who rests upon a living faith ... and has responded to my love with an answering love may claim heaven as his home ... He who believes not the Gospel, but despises it or distorts it ... nothing shall keep him from the everlasting fire ... In my name you shall root out the foulest diseases of the mind, pride, sloth, lust, ambition, envy, covetousness, and anger. Soon the heavenly Father will breathe upon you and inspire you with the Holy Ghost ... under its guidance you shall not hesitate to approach Kings and Lords ... and instruct them in the truth.18

Considering the Protestant flavor of the play, its Nachleben is rather ironical. It circulated widely in German and in 1566 was the model for Sebastian Wilde's Von den Leyden und Sterben auch die Aufferstehung unseres Hernn Jesu Christ. When the citizens of Oberammergau had to provide a text for the play which they had vowed to perform as a thank-offering, they put it together from Wilde's play and a fifteenth century monastic 17 18

Merrill, p. 109. Merrill, p. 210-213. Translation amended.

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version of the death of Christ. 10 Thus Grimald's Christus Redi· vivus had some share in the modern world's most famous Passion play, ι» 3. GRIMALD'S ARCH1PROPHETA Christus Nascens seems to have been Grimald's last exploration of a traditional subject. He moved on to studies of heroic figures from the Bible and church history, similar to those treated by Radcliffe at Hitchin. Radcliffe's "heroes" included Job, Jonah, Susanna, and John Hus. Grimald selected John the Baptist, Stephen, and Athanasius, all three of whom in a sense stood alone "contra mundum". Of these plays only Archipropheta survives. In Archipropheta, written 1546-7, Grimald essays a tragedy on the same figure who had earlier attracted both Bale and George Buchanan. His artistic aims were high. In the dedication to Richard Cox, then recently appointed dean of Christ Church, Grimald says he has tried to create "living and breathing" characters and to make the action as vivid as possible, in order to delight both the learned and the vulgar. However, his main objectives are religious and moral. The spectators will learn "the way to approach Christ" through "unfeigned repentance", and through reverent wonder at the signs attending John's marvelous birth. Virtue and vice will be delineated. John's "stainless life", "his zeal in propagating religion, his freedom of speech, devotion in prayer [and] earnest admonitions" 2 0 will win admiration, as will his noble death, worthy of a Christian. On the other hand, the audience may also observe how hypocrites in their vanity and self-interest neglect true religion, how Herod was punished for his impiety, and what evil consequences spring from 19

This was the text of 1662, the earliest known. See August Hartmann, Das Oberammergauer Passionspiel in seiner Altesten Gestalt (Leipzig, 1880), and Montrose J. Moses, The Passion Play of Oberammergau (New York, 1934). According to Moses (p. lxxi), the drama was re-written c. 1750, 1760, by Father Rosner, a Benedictine, and has been revised many times since. 20 Merrill, p. 235

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wanton women, royal lust, and the flattery of courtiers. Though ambitious, these claims were not wildly exaggerated; Grimald's play does in fact do most of these things. His treatment differs from Bale's in that it is artistically closer to German and Dutch humanist drama. It may, in fact, owe its general plan and certain details such as the use of a court fool and the elaboration of Herod's feast to another early Baptist play, Jakob Schoepper's Johannes Decollatus, published by Martin Gymnicus, Grimald's own printer, in 1546. 2 1 The mingling of comedy and tragedy, the use of low comedy scenes with the servants, and the romantic handling of the Herod-Herodias affair all recall the work of academic dramatists in the Rhineland and the Netherlands. 2 2 Grimald did not attempt a late attack and a rapidly mounting crisis. He wished to include not only as much Biblical material as possible, but also several details from the account of Herod, Herodias, and the Baptist in Josephus' Antiquities. Merrill is incorrect, however, in stating (pp. 221-22) that Grimald is using Josephus "rather than" the Bible. 2 3 Actually, Grimald, like- MOSI 21

In Schoepper's play, the action is divided as follows: Act I - John preaches by the Jordan to the multitude: Act II - the Pharisees and Sadducees unite against John: Act III - Herodias is surprised at the lessened tenderness of her husband: Act IV - she learns from the fool of John's criticism of her relationship with Herod: Act V - Herod's birthday, Salome's dance, Herod's promise, the death of John, the laments of the disciples and even of the executioner. John is buried by his youthful followers. Grimald's play follows much the same pattern. 22 Grimald did not slavishly imitate Schoepper. His fool is much more fully developed, his John is more tactful to Herod, and his lovers are more impassioned. Moreover, according to Boas (p. 35), "there is no verbal imitation and Grimald's lyrical gifts lend his play a charm and poignancy that are all its own". 23 Josephus (the entire passage is quoted in Merrill, pp. 222-4) indicates much more fully than the Bible the relationship between Herod, Herodias, and Herod's first wife, the daugther of Aretas, king of Arabia Petrea. Aretas, as in Josephus, is said to be making war on Herod in revenge for the insult to his daugther, and Herodias' jealousy of her predecessor deepens her insecurity and so motivates her attack on John. The Gospel does not name the prison into which John was thrown, but Grimald, followinp Tosephus, gives it as Mâcheras, a fortress on the border between

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other humanist playwrights, worked in most of the material from the gospels. The prologue draws on the Synoptics and on the early chapters of the Fourth Gospel in explaining John's function as ambassador of Christ. The action begins immediately after the baptism of Christ - that is, much earlier than in Buchanan's Baptistes, though later than in John Baptist's Preaching. John announces that, though all unworthy, he has revealed the Incarnate God to men and brought sinners "into the faith and the congregation of Christ". From then on John seems to be regarded as a Christian: he uses the Trinitarian formula and borrows snatches of Jesus' teaching. In the course of the play, all the other incidents connected with John are brought in — his dealings with the Pharisees, his exchanges with Jesus, his reproaches to Herod and Herodias, and his final imprisonment and death. Unlike Bale, Grimald has even reported, through one of the disciples, the entire story of John's miraculous birth, very much as in the first chapter of Luke. The speech is over 100 lines long and is the only dull one in the play. Apart from this regrettable digression, which resembles the scene in Christus Redivivus where Mary Magdalene and Cleophis describe the miracles of Jesus, Grimald's dramaturgy shows considerable advance since his first experiment. Gone are most of the long rhetorical speeches, the monotonous reporting of events which we have already seen or should have seen, the anachronisms, the strained emotionalism. In Archipropheta Grimald has worked out a well-motivated plot which moves swiftly to a logical end through a series of short, lively, and varied scenes. Comic and romantic scenes alternate with the more serious homiletic passages which fortunately are never allowed to dominate the action. The principal characters are vividly

the territories of Aretas and Herod. But these are minor points and do not affect Grimald's approach to the story in any important way. Grimald did not even use Josephus' name for Herodias' daughter. Instead of Salome, he calls her Tryphera, meaning "voluptuous".

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drawn. The minor characters are remarkable for their variety, 24 and the historical setting is colorfully suggested. In fact, the first point that strikes the reader of Archipropheta is the lavish scale on which Grimald planned his production. The dais at Christ Church 2 5 must have been crowded with actors. There are no less than four choruses, the common people (hearers of John), followers of Herod, banqueters, and Idumaeans (i.e. Edomites). Then, as well as the four principals, there are two Pharisees, two Syrian slaves, an indefinite number of John's disciples, and Herod's fool Gelasimus, all of whom have speaking parts. Grimald was serious about his historical background (for example, he distinguishes carefully between the various Jewish sects 26 and never permits anachronisms to creep into his characters' speeches) and one wonders if he tried to approximate period costumes for this huge cast. If the settings indicated in the text were employed, they too must have been impressive, for they include the banks of Jordan, "Herod's lofty towers", prison bars at the fortress of Macherus, and an elaborately served banquet on Herod's feast day, which is graced by music, song, dance, and special decorations arranged by Herodias. 2 7 Equally remarkable is the range and variety of Grimald's metrical command. He can turn from Bacchic hymns and Sapphic odes to the moving liturgical lament which closes the play. His least successful scenes are his attempts at comedy, where 24

Even the minor figures are given some humanity and depth. For instance, the Syrian slave girl, who appears as a lighthearted figure in the early scenes, gives perfectly serious and emotional expression to the horror the audience should feel at the death of John. 25 No records of the production survive, but Boas, who has gone into the problem, has little doubt that the play was presented at Christ Church, probably in the early months of 1547. "Grimald had in mind throughout the scenic arrangements of the Tudor college stage at this period". For further details, see his University Drama, pp. 34-42. 2e He includes the Essenes, who are not mentioned in the Bible (see Merrill, p. 275). 27 The music, according to the text, is played by "cithern, lyre, and trumpet"; there are five songs - on Herod's splendor, on the delight of wine (two), on Herod's glory and fame, and on the fruits which grace the feast

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the fool Gelasimus begs the slave for a kiss, mocks the Pharisees who gabble "mum mum ba be be", and even burlesques Herod's lovesick manner. He tries on the jewels of Herodias, taunts her with being wife to two Herods at once, and when his ears are boxed complains that he who tells the truth is always punished. Grimald's triumph is his handling of the Herod-Herodias relationship. Quick to grasp its theatrical possibilities, he builds it up with passionate love-songs, unguarded soliloquies, and (to show how it looked to the public) the cynical comments of palace servants. In conception if not in accomplishment, Grimald is striving after an effect not entirely unworthy of comparison with the relationship between Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Though his is a relatively simple sketch, and though Herod lacks the nobility of Antony and Herodias the complexity and varied charm of Cleopatra, Grimald is trying to show us a couple no longer young, conscious that time is passing and that theirs is a mutuality not wholly sensuous. Herodias is no pasteboard witch, but a strong-willed, passionate woman, determined to preserve a relationship of enormous importance to herself. "I chose you alone in preference to reputation, to modesty, to my native land, to my husband ... oh ... that you loved with a passion like mine!" She is also driven by pride, by the fear of being sent back to the husband who now hates her violently, and by her desire to retain her power. The suspense over, the affair is excellently maintained throughout two and a half acts. Ironically, at first Herodias as well as Herod is attracted to John, initially by curiosity over his miraculous birth, later by the nobility of his voice and bearing and by his prophecies of a Messiah who will heal sick souls. Herod willingly agrees to a private conference and is persuaded that he is "acting contrary to the laws ... which the Father Almighty gave to Moses". "I repent", he cries, "I see that I have wronged my brother's marriage-bed. But O my wife, whom I love and who loves me ... how will you bear this?" Only at this point does Herodias turn against John. In a most effective scene, she and John battle for Herod's will, John begging him to "reject the love of woman for the love of God", Herodias arguing that their

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public vows and the depth of their love sanctify their "marriage". "Am I not Herodias?" she asks. Herod gives in at last, and John is led away in chains. Herodias still feels insecure. She fears John will convince Herod at last; she would like to get rid of him, yet she fears the vengeance of the people. Desperation drives her to the plot involving Tryphera. As Herodias decks her daugther out in flattering jewels and rehearses her in the dance, Grimald with a real feeling for dramatic contrast alternates these scenes with "shots", so to speak (his technique is very cinematic) of John in prison. Herodias, who is still troubled by a feeling of guilt, pays a secret visit to John to try to entreat or threaten him from his stand, but he merely says quietly that her will and God's are at variance. Herod is still torn between his love for Herodias and his respect for John: "I deem him worthy of death because he does not fear death". As John prays alone, the banqueters gather, the food and Falernian wines are brought in, the clown jokes, the musicians play, and the singers praise wine, love, and Herod. When the excitement is at its height, Tryphera comes out to dance. Herod is entranced, begs for on encore, makes his hasty promise and before he has time to think it over, he sends a lictor out to do the execution. The moment when the head is brought in is made more horrible because Tryphera tries to make light erf John's death. The slave girl speaks for the audience: "Immortal God, what a crime has been committed!" and runs out crying to tell the disciples. In the last act Grimald presents Herodias and Herod (in separate scenes - they are not seen together again) overcome by remorse, like the Macbeths. Even now he does not oversimplify them, for Herodias' feeling is one of mingled pride, fear, guilt, and the ambition which is hardening her. She tries to shrug off her unhappiness by telling herself that nothing matters as long as she is still queen. Herod is not so tough. He wishes he had never made or fulfilled his wicked promise and is a prey to irrational fears of exile or starvation. "What furies madden me! When I would sleep, what trembling seizes me and what restlessness!" John's disciple (who has come for the body) reminds him that what is done cannot be undone. Herod in his grief cries out that he

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is weary of life and only wishes to die. These are his last words before the lament which closes the play. Archipropheta is a romantic tragedy, as alien in atmosphere and intention to Buchanan's austere and static Baptistes as to Bale's satirical and polemic Preaching. Grimald keeps the human relationships central and only by the way touches on tyranny, vows, and divorce. If he is aware of contemporary implications of these themes, he does not press them. Has he, then, nothing in common with his predecessors? He has, and it is disclosed in his treatment of John the Baptist. As in Bale's play, the early scenes in which John appears are traditional in that his addresses to his disciples are homiletic in character. He speaks of man's history since the son of Adam, his corrupted will, his fallen nature, and his bondage to the law. Christ has come to free man from this bondage, and John's task is to reveal Him and to prepare men for His salvation by pointing out their sins and bringing them to repentance. Grimald even has John allude to some of the Old Testament prefigurings of New Testament events: for instance, he reminds his hearers that the Jordan waters can wash away their sins, even as they healed the leprosy of Naaman. His John also allegorizes the hills and valleys passage from Isaiah (40 : 3), indicating familiarity with the Glossa or some other medieval commentary. The hostility between John and the Pharisees reminds us of Bale. Their very names, Philautus and Typhlus, meaning "selflove" and "blind", are suggestive. They are oblivious to all interests but their own, hypocrites skillful in deceit and blinded by their love of ceremonial. They look down on John's humble followers, term him a heretic, and plan to get rid of him by accusing him of sedition. Grimald's picture of John as a prophet also reminds us of Bale's. John speaks for God to the people, and the humble receive him and understand him when the proud and mighty treat him with disdain. Like Bale's hero, Grimald's John is aware that he must face isolation and hatred, and he prays for strength to continue the task God has set him, even if it means his death. Though more diplomatic and pleasant than his earlier counter-

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parts in his dealings with Herod (whom he almost wins over) he is just as inflexible. In his last hours, as Herod and Herodias prepare for the feast, he rejoices to hear from his disciples that his "heraldship is over" and that "Christ's gospel is spreading through the world". We have a brief glimpse of him, just before the banqueters break into the song in praise of wine, thanking God that "with unshaken faith and with untroubled conscience he awaits his entry into the heavenly kingdom". After the long, luxurious, gay banquet, he is executed at last, while the Chorus comments on the dreadful deed. Then suddenly God, who at the outset promised the prophet, "Thou shalt conquer most when the tyrant thinks thee overcome", appears briefly to reassure the audience. "O John, it is otherwise with thee than men think. Hidden victory falls to him who is overcome by violence". His people, God continues, should suffer persecution bravely, trusting not in their own strength, but in the divine power which will support them to the end. Thus Grimald's John, like Bale's, is both ancient and modern, at once a historical and contemporary figure, a prototype of true martyrs, and a model for contemporary victims of persecution who may also rest on the assurance that Vindicta Dei will comfort and uphold him. However, Archipropheta is an artistic success to a degree which Bale cannot claim. Grimald created convincing human beings, displayed their contrasting motives sympathetically in a rich variety of scenes, and showed the potentiality for destruction which may be latent in people who do not, in the beginning, intend harm to anyone. Half a generation before Gismund, Gorboduc, and Jocasta, sixty years before Shakespeare's tragedies, Grimald demonstrated in this highly theatrical play that ambition and passion which smother conscience can corrode, and that even a "mutual love" which works against one's better nature, may, in the end, be destructive both of others and of the relationship itself. Grimald's achievement should win him recognition as one of the best of our early dramatists.

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CHRISTOPHERSON'S

JEPHTHE

Meanwhile, probably after Grimald wrote his Christus Redivivus but before he completed his Archiprophèta, John Christopherson of Cambridge wrote his Jephthe, the sole English humanist Biblical play in Greek. 2 8 Christopherson, later (under Mary) Master of Trinity and Bishop of Chichester, had been a student of John Redman, who was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity when Christopherson was at Pembroke and St. John's. Redman, besides being a noted theologian, was a classical enthusiast and a close student of the scriptures. He evidently made a powerful impression on Christopherson, who, Catholic though he was, remembered his Protestant tutor in his will. It is perhaps to Redman's inspiration that Christopherson owes his attempt to treat a Biblical narrative in the Greek tragic manner. According to his own record, he was attracted by the resemblance between the Jephthah story and Iphigenia. A s I was carefully going over the pages of the Old Testament story, I came by a lucky chance upon the story of Jephthah's v o w as it is related in Judges XI. This, so at least I thought, offered appropriate material for tragedy, for, as I examined the eloquent Iphigenia of Euripides, I saw clearly that the heroines were not dissimilar. 2 9

In the dedication to William Parr in the Trinity manuscript of the play, Christopherson claims that the study of scripture "provides a balm for the healing of wickedness", so that Biblical lessons can heal our moral diseases. He rejoiced to find in Jephthah and his daughter excellent examples of healing virtue. For, if a man be a victim of any injustice, he should learn by the example of Jephthah h o w to bear that injustice calmly. If a man's country is endangered, Jephthah will teach him to g o to its aid 48

Jephthe by John Christopherson. The Greek text edited and translated into English by Francis Howard Fobes ... with an introduction by Wilbur Owen Sypherd, Newark, Delaware, 1928; referred to below as Fobes ed. Two beautifully written manuscripts may still be seen, one at St. John's, Cambridge, dedicated to Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, and the other, at Trinity, dedicated to William Parr, Henry VIII's brotherin law, made Earl of Essex in 1543. Boas, p. 47, dates the play c. 1544. 28 Fobes ed., p. 12.

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gladly. If a man determines to make vows, he should learn from this story not to bind himself to God rashly. If children refuse to bow to the authority of their parents, they should set themselves to imitate Jephthah's daugther who, from regard to her father's word, went to her death eagerly. Finally, if we are setting out to fight an enemy, we ought to trust not so much in our own strength but in God's.

In the dedication to Tunstall in the St. John MS., Christopherson declares that scriptural truth may be superior to the fictions of ancient tragedy. He [Euripides] followed after the fictions of the poets of old, and, with perfect taste, produced a fictitious story: I have sought the venerable springs of truth and have with truthfulness, as I hope, set forth a true history.

Christopherson did, in fact, set forth his "true history" episode by episode, using most of the events recorded in Judges 11 in the order in which they happened and beginning early in the story in order to treat the bastard Jephthah's relationship with his brothers. After a Prologue in which Jephthah resolves not to use his strength to quarrel with his brothers because this would grieve both God and his parents, two of the brothers debate whether or not Jephthah should be exiled. The unkinder of the two replies to Jephthah's civil greetings by reminding him that he is a bastard, adding All men have loathing for thee, and with reason. The law denies inheritance to bastards.

Jephthah, reminding himself to "be calm and suffer", says he is ready for exile, for "the wise man's land lies wheresoer he thrive", and God will be with him. He goes forth forgiving his brothers, wishing them well, and proclaiming his faith in God. After the Chorus praises his merciful nature, he is recalled because of the danger from the Ammonites and generously and patriotically takes over the leadership of the army because he loves his parents and his country. However, Christopherson has made him a peace-lover and he sends twice to the Ammonite tyrant to ask vainly for a truce, until it is made quite clear that the Ammonites are aggressors and that Jephthah is fighting a just

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war in defense of his country. (Christopherson had to force the text some what to create this effect). When it is clear that "grievous war" is inevitable, Jephthah makes an impassioned prayer for victory, closing with his famous and fatal vow: Full solemnly I vow That, if Thou give the sons of Ammon over Into my hand, then it shall be, O Lord, That whoso from the door comes forth the first To meet me when I reach my home again, Him will I slay as sacrifice to thee. The act ends with a dignified and impressive prayer, "Cover us with the shadow of thy might, / Come to deliver Israel". After the chorus meditates further on warfare in a just cause, a messenger describes the battle. Jephthah is compared to a lion among oxen and a wolf among sheep, while it is said that the enemy's tears flow "as darkling water flows from off a cliff". As the Chorus gives thanks to God, Jephthah returns in triumph; however, Christopherson gives him no touch of hubris, for he is careful to ascribe the victory to God alone. At this moment of piety, his daughter appears. When she understands the vow her father has made, she accepts her fate without hesitation - a potentially dramatic decision scene being sacrificed to Christopherson's desire to display her pious readiness "to die for God". 3 0 He put into her mouth an addition to the Biblical narrative, a touching speech in which she sorrows that she will not be able to bear children or comfort her father's old age, realizes with momentary dismay that he may have other children, reminds herself that her safety lies in God alone, and begs for two months to bewail her virginity on the mountains. The Chorus meditates on the pitifulness of youthful death and the necessity of weighing solemn vows, "for God demands the promised price". In the next scene Christopherson entirely departs from Judges 11, for he introduces a wife to Jephthah, who denies that her husband should keep such a wicked vow: "God loves not blood, / Utterly hates the wretch who slays his child". She reduces him 30

Her resignation is, however, quite in accord with Judges 11 : 36.

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to complete despair and he is about to stab himself when the daughter returns from the hills just in time to stop him. She reaffirms the necessity of obedience and goes out to her death with the prayer B e compassionate Toward my father, give the country peace, Lighten my mother's anguish, grant to m e Brave heart and patient strength to meet my doom.

Jephthah follows her out, a messenger describes the final sacrifice, and the Chorus prays she may find bliss in Paradise and asserts once more that Vows unto God must e'er be wisely made And paid in full; this is the righteous act.

Christopherson's dramatizing has the awkwardness of a beginner. His point of attack is very early and includes Jephthah's quarrel with his brothers and his exile. Time is loosely handled. Jephthah's exile appears to last only a few minutes and his visit to his parents only a few seconds. Entrances and exits are often unmotivated; for instance the Chorus of Elders are brought in without preparation when it is convenient to the author. Perhaps the worst error is the introduction of the mother so late in the play, after Jephthah has spoken of his daughter as the sole prop of his declining years and after it has been settled that the child is to die. The mother's attempts to argue the case at this point rather detract from the tragic effect. 3 1 The episodic method did allow Christopherson to show Jephthah as a kindly son and a forgiving brother. By suppressing Other defects of the play remove it from the spirit of Greek tragedy. For example, Christopherson avoids the least trace of hubris in his hero. Jephthah ascribes the victory to God, not to his own prowess. Even so, he is then called upon to sacrifice his daughter. The case is different in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, where it is made clear that the demand for the sacrifice of Iphigenia is a divine admonition against the hubris of the whole enterprise. There is a certain moral confusion, too, in Christopherson's play. The sacrifice of the girl seems meaningless and the god who demands it legalistic, cruel, and irrational.

31

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Jephthah's bargain with the elders 32 Christopherson represented his return to fight for Israel as evidence of his love of country and of his solidarity with his people. Jephthah is also represented as a peacemaker who would prefer a settlement to combat and who, before he fights, makes certain that his cause is just. A man of faith who ascribes his victories to God, he is also an affectionate father who is overwhelmed by grief when he discovers the tragedy he has brought upon his family. The daughter, the victim of the careless vow, is also very sympathetically portrayed. Her effort to adapt her mind to the thought of death is particularly touching, because she is aware of so many facets of her situation and because she restrains the violence of her grief until her father is gone. She returns from her mountain retreat in a lofty and resigned frame of mind, ready "to meet death's angel". These changes of mood make it easier to believe in her and to feel some sorrow at her death. If Jephthe is a play about virtuous characters, it is also a play of ideas. Solemn vows must be kept. Wars for selfish ends are deplorable, though just wars to defend territory may be pursued. Victory must be, in all humility, ascribed to God alone. An illegitimate son, such as Jephthah was, should not be scorned, for the sin is not his but his parents'. All men are sinful and in need of God's compassion. Mercy is a godlike quality and one which, once experienced, man should pass on to his fellows for "aye from mercy, mercy springs", while "heardness of heart outrages all". These sentiments are presented both in the action and by the Chorus. In his characters and in these sentiments Christopherson's gentle and lofty mind found a natural expression.

5.

FOXE'S CHRISTUS

TRIUMPHANS

Foxe's play takes us back to Oxford and back into religious controversy. Foxe was a slightly older contemporary of Grimald's 32

"If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the Lord delivers them before me, shall I be your head?" See Judges 11 : 9-10.

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at Oxford. Both were members of Brasenose, but in 1539, the year before Grimald arrived, Foxe obtained a fellowship to Magdalen, where he studied and taught until 1545. 3 3 He wrote there Latin plays on religious topics; one of these, not Biblical, survives in manuscript in the British Museum. 34 Like Grimald, Foxe was a Protestant: he refused ordination in 1545 because of objections to clerical celibacy. However, he was not the artist Grimald was, his aims as a dramatist being purely propagandist. Christus Triumphans 3 5 is an Antichrist play in the tradition of Kirchmayer and Bale. Bale, who had translated Kirchmayer's Pammachius, may possibly have given Foxe the idea of writing an "apocalyptic comedy" when the two men were living in the same house under the protection of the Duchess of Suffolk in 1547. Foxe's play, like Pammachius and Three Laws, covers a huge slice of history, shows Satan and Rome in an unholy alliance, and reveals the church betrayed by what is false within until the discovery of the Bible during the Reformation helps to prepare the way for the Second Coming. The Preface makes clear that Foxe's aim is to deliver an apocalyptic warning, rather than to recreate classical comedy. He expects the end of history, for man, he says, has become so degenerate that whoever "looks at the ways of men as in a mirror judges that the grain is ripe for the sickle of the angelic reaper". He hopes for the Second Coming: "Oh, that He may come in triumph, not on the stage but in the clouds". Just as Paul warned the Thessalonians, he feels he must warn his hearers, first that the church must be purified and then that men must take part in the struggle against the Antichrist by prayer, by austerity of life, and by true faith. Like his namesake, John of Patmos, he pictures "the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her hus33

J. F. Mozley, John Foxe and His Book (London, 1940), pp. 17-23. Lansdowne MS. 388, pp. 112-46. 36 As far as I know this play has never been as fully described as it deserves. Mozley (p. 53) devotes but one paragraph to it. Lily B. Campbell gives a short account of it (Divine Poetry and Drama, pp. 187-8). Herford discusses it in his Literary Relations, pp. 138-48. 34

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band"; 3 6 yet he fears, he says, that the heavenly Bridegroom may come and find them "sunk in dissolute living" or "snoring on our backs". To point out the wickedness of Epicurean sensuality, to explain how Christ freed us from the law, and to expose the persecutions wrought by Satan and his bishops and priests on the true church, Foxe has, he says, made a play of the Biblical Apocalypse, dramatizing "those parts of it which seem most relevant to the present state of the church". He was concerned with Rome as the whore of Babylon, with the parallel between the old Rome of the Emperors and the modern Rome of the popes. He wanted to expose the sources of the popes' power, and to show that it would all pass away. The section of the Apocalypse that Foxe used begins with the cosmic struggle in Chapter 12, where the woman in travail probably stands for Israel, striving to give birth to the Messiah. The great red dragon, Satan, is ready to devour the child, but God finds a refuge for Israel while the dragon wars with the angelic host and is overcome and cast down to earth by the Lamb. In revenge, Satan persecutes the woman, who now represents the Church, the New Israel, and vows eternal war on "the remnant of her seed which keeps the commandments". He is helped by the first beast who has power over the nations and the second beast who deceives the world with marvelous signs and wonders. The saints suffer with patience and fortitude until the Son of Man comes on a cloud with a sickle in His hand to reap the grapes of God's wrath. (This was the angelic reaper of Foxe's preface). In the seventeenth chapter appears "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS". Arrayed in purple and scarlet, she is the habitation of devils, she is "drunken with the blood of the saints and, with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus", 37 and all the kings of the earth commit fornication with her. She lives in pride, luxury, and idolatry and for this will be punished by God who will come to judge her and to avenge his saints. God's voice calls, "Come out of her, my 38 3T

Rev. 21 : 2. Rev. 17 : 5, 6.

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people, that ye be not partakers in her sin". 3 8 Foxe had no difficulty in identifying this Rome of the Caesars with the Roman Church. The climax of the Book of Revelation is the Marriage of the Lamb. He that is called Faithful and True comes on a white horse in a vesture dipped in blood and with a sword in His mouth. Babylon falls, the beast is taken, the false prophet is done away with, the devil is bound, and those who "died for the witness of Jesus" reign with Christ for a thousand years. The dead rise up and stand before God, and all who suffered gather in Paradise where "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are past away". "He that overcometh shall inherit all things". Here the prophet describes the vision of the new Jerusalem, and hears the voice repeating, "Behold, I come quickly". The vision ends with the prayer, deeply moving in its simplicity, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus". So Christus Triumphans was to end, on a note of exalted hope. Foxe did not, however, limit himself to these scenes from the Revelation. He also included a few incidents from the Gospels and Acts - the lamentation after the crucifixion, the hostility of the priestly group to the early church, Saul's early connection with the priests, and Peter's escape from prison - and passed in review the history of the church from the Resurrection to the Reformation. In a way, his play is a morality on a grand scale in which cosmic Virtues and cosmic Vices struggle for the soul and body (Psyche and Soma) of man and for 1500 years struggled for the soul of Ecclesia, a tearful, passive, and apparently helpless protagonist. Instead of the strange beast, horses and other symbols of the apocalypse, he has used type figures whose names represent their functions in society and history, and in the eternal kingdoms of good and evil. Soma and Psyche are both under bondage to Satan's executioners, Thanatus and Psychephonus, Death and Death of the Soul: the latter at times represents hypocrisy which 88

Rev. 18 : 4.

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destroys the soul, and is garbed like a Franciscan. In the scenes following the Resurrection, Archiereus the Chief Priest, Nomologus the Priest, and Polyharpax the Scribe represent the enemies who have contrived the death of Christ and who are contriving the extirpation of the Christians in Jerusalem, but like Bale's Pharisaeus and Sadducaeus, they are types familiar to the sixteenth century. There are also three tyrants: Nomocrates, who "figures the whole burden of the Law", is later joined by Dioctes, the Roman Persecutor, (also worldly power), and later still by the false Messiah, Pseudamnus ("false lamb") who takes over many functions of the earlier tyrants and whose bride is Pornapolis, the Whore of Babylon, and (at some points) the Epicurean sensuality in the world to which Foxe objected so strongly. Adopylus and Anabasius are servants in Hell. All these make up the forces of Antichrist. The one type-figure who is unmistakably and always on the "good" side is Hierologus the Prophet, whose importance will appear presently. 3 9 Since this play is not available in English, it may be useful to describe it at some length. The opening scenes are somewhat traditional in mood, for they show women lamenting immediately after the Crucifixion. These are not, however, the conventional three Marys, but Eve and the mother of Jesus - Eve the gateway of sin, and Mary the gateway of salvation. Eve is weeping for her daughter Psyche who was stolen away by Satan and for her son Soma, who is in bondage to law and death. She herself, she admits, is "the grandmother of all misfortune", as her children were lost to her the moment she bit the apple, but she has heard that "one will come who will grind the head of the serpent". 4 0 Mary weeps bitterly for her son 4 1 but confesses that His miraculous birth gives her hope that God 38

The meaning of some of these names is obvious. Nomologías (Decalogus in the B.M. MS.) is the written law; Dioctes (Machomus in the MS.) means hunter or pursuer : or even prosecutor. Adophylus seems to mean "gate of pleasure" or possibly "Nethergate"; and Anabasius, perhaps "one who goes up" (Pride? idolatry?) - he is a messenger from Hell. Christ Himself is at one point called Philanthropos. 40 Genesis 3 : 15. 41 The mothers dispute which of them is more unhappy; compare Richard III, IV, iv.

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intends some divine end to come out of the present misery. Just at this moment, Satan is cast down from heaven 4 2 in a mood of defiance and fury, and shrinks in fear while Christus Redivivus leads Psyche out of Hell, sends her to heaven to wait for her brother Soma, and announces that the devil is to be bound for a thousand years. Acts II and III represent the ages of persecution, which began in New Testament times when the church was still pure. Archiereus, Nomologus, and Polyharpax confer about putting down the new sect which, they say, is composed of "the lowest dregs, buyers of broken chickpeas, 43 tax collectors, grooms, cobblers, low-class people from the crossroads and highways", who are making trouble by insisting that Christ has risen. "That man", declares Archiereus, "is more trouble dead than alive". He orders the heretics destroyed by the sword, fire and other methods. Saul, the colleague of this group, is promised "letters mandate" (as in Acts 9 : 1-2); he is as put out as they are to find these "wooly and fat fishermen ... turning the Law of Moses upside down". Saul has some trouble collecting his permit and is forced to give the greedy scribe a sizable tip. Meanwhile, Peter has miraculously escaped from prison (Acts 5 : 22-25), but the devil's work is still being carried on by Pornapolis, who at this point probably represents lechery and cruelty in the world. A third lament of a mother over her children opens Act III. Ecclesia's three sons, Africus, Europas, and Asia, have been imprisoned by Nomocrates, who threatens to send her, the "latest child of Eve" to Thanatos, as she has been "sold under sin". A new era is inaugurated when Dioctes the Persecutor is sent by Satan to join Nomocrates. He calls forth the ten persecuting emperors from Domitian to Constantius while Paul 4 4 comforts Ecclesia with the hope that her sons will be rescued and explains 42

Foxe's time scheme is queer, and so is that of the author of Revelation. Traditionally, Satan falls before the creation. Perhaps Foxe's justification was Luke 10 : 18, where "He [Jesus] said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fell from heaven." 43 A classical circumlocution for the very poorest. 44 Is something missing here? Or is Foxe assuming that the audience would know of Saul's conversion?

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that Christ has blotted out "the handwriting of the ordinances that was against us" (Colossians 2 : 14), redeemed us from the curse of the Law (Galatians 3 : 13), and made possible the resurrection of both soul and body (I Corinthians 15). 45 Pyschephonus, who earlier came in babbling incoherently about the Resurrection, here describes in unnecessary detail the symptoms of the now moribund Nomocrates, who has to be revived with smelling salts and who is sent off to Babylon, where the air will suit him. Psychephonus also complains that every Christian has a key which can unlock Nomocrates' prison (faith, we may presume, see Galatians 3 : 11-12) and that Christians generally are expecting the Second Coming. In a monologue at the beginning of Act IV, Dioctes boasts that with the help of the ten Caesars he has trampled Christianity under foot for about 300 years. But, warned by a messenger from Hell that Constantine has seen the sign of the cross and become a Christian, he takes fright and runs away to Latium. Ecclesia has gloomy forebodings that this is not the end of her troubles. These forebodings turn out to be justified when, presumably at some time early in the eleventh century, the church suffers a new Fall when Satan is freed and joins Pseudamnus and Pornapolis who with their ally Psychephonus now represent the medieval church. The alliance plots to betray "another Troy" from within. It is Satan who plans the strategy. They must work by guile and employ the temptations which only Christ resisted pleasure, vainglory, lust for power. Pseudamnus must visit Babylon with a purse of gold, for then, "when an office is vacant, it can be bought with a coin". Pseudamnus must look like the innocent flower and be the serpent under it. Though he makes "laws written in the blood of martyrs", he must seem merciful and gentle, Christ's true vicar on earth. He need not keep faith unless it pays him to do so: "Keep faith rarely with kings, never with heretics". 46 Lay leadership should be despised, rejected, and trampled under foot. Satan has two practical schemes in mind: 45

These references give only a faint idea of the many echoes from the Epistles; compare Galatians 2-6, Ephesians 2, Colossians 2. 46 An allusion, probably, to the betrayal of John Hus.

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Pseudamnus should take over the functions of the two older tyrants, Nomocrates and Dioctes, and make war upon the Turks to distract attention from the teachings of the heretics. Much pleased with himself, the devil now gives Anabasius money to buy rich garments for Pornapolis and rejoices that "the times shall not cease to snort of Satan". At his behest, the false pope, the false friar, and Pornapolis set to work. As a result of their machinations, the state of Ecclesia and her family goes from bad to worse. Asia is captive to the Turks, and Europus and Africus are seduced by Pornapolis, who offers them the high-sounding titles of Most Christian King and Defender of the Faith. Ecclesia herself is confronted by her rival, accused of being a "schismatic of Origen's kind", a "pauper from Lyons", 47 a "Vuyclevist", 48 and an Anabaptist. When she insists that she is the true Bride of Christ, she is carried off to Bedlam. Pseudamnus praises Pornapolis with sickly endearments while Psychephonus, habited as a Franciscan, and Adopylus, represented as a Catholic layman, recite snatches of Latin liturgies and pray for the pope and the whole assembly of cardinals. At this point Hierologus the prophet takes Europus aside and warns him that he has been deceived. Pseudamnus is really the Antichrist and Pornapolis an adulterous whore: their actions, their doctrines, their effect on the world all prove it. Europus, much shocked, decides to return immediately to the true church, his mother Ecclesia. Psychephonus is afflicted with bad dreams: Scotus and Aquinas fight each other and "myriads of psalm-singing heretics" pour great waves over Purgatory. The Reformation is in floodtide. "Everyone is reading the scriptures now, quarrymen, carpenters, potters ... dregs of the people, and (what is worse) ... they begin to weigh our customs against the Gospels". Anabasius, the messenger of Hell, admits that the world, once blind, begins to see. "Men of letters everywhere" urge the public "not to be led by the nose". The pope's keys, bulls, and triple crown are universally despised. Pseudamnus's attempts to prove that the Turk is the 47 48

I.e. Peter Waldo, founder of the Waldensians. Wycliffite.

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beast of Revelation are disregarded. Pornapolis swoons and has to be led out. Next there is a family reunion. Europus and Africus return to their mother Ecclesia. Maimed and widowed 49 as she is, the Chorus of Wise Virgins 50 hails her as "she who watches for salvation while the world sleeps the old sleep of perdition". Ecclesia says her wounds are her jewels, for they were gained in Christ's name, Africus would revenge her wrongs by the sword, but Ecclesia tells her that prayers are better than spears and that only Christ Himself can finally put to flight the Antichrist. It is the lot of the saints to suffer persecution. "Weighed down with miseries and tears", she prays, "we stretch out our hands to Thee, dear Jesus, that Thy right hand may help us when all human refuge fails. Long, long hast Thou been absent from us, and Thy lambs have been robbed, beaten, burned, destroyed by fire and water ... Break through the heavens, that we may return to Thee. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus". Here the Wise Virgins come forward "as if from the heavens", books are placed ready (as in Revelation 20 : 12) and robes are let down from above to deck the Bride of Christ for the heavenly Bridegroom (Revelation 19 : 7-8). The Virgins light their lamps, Europus and Africus hail the New Jerusalem, messages are sent to cheer Hierologus and Theosebes in prison, and the Epithalamium celebrates the Marriage of the Lamb and calls on the living and the resurrected dead to gather "where God shall wipe all tears from their eyes" (Revelation 21 : 4). The Chorus of the Virgins underlines the scheme: N o w , spectators, you see the Bride is ready ... nothing remains except for the supreme Bridegroom to bring an end to the play. N o man knoweth the hour when H e will come (Matthew 24 : 26; compare Revelation 3 : 3 ) . The poet has shown y o u all he can, and zealously warns you to be prepared and not be found sleeping. The time may not be long when the Lamb in triumph will conquer at last... W a t c h ! 5 1 49

Compare the widow England in Bale's King John. These are the Virgins of the parable in Matthew 25, not "the Virgins who follow the Lamb" of Revelation. 61 Christus Triumphans, Act V, final Chorus. 50

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1 IS

Like Kirchmayer, Foxe surveys the history of the Church to his own day. Both conclude in expectation of the Second Coming. Like Luther, Tyndale, Frith, and Bale, Foxe regards the medieval church as corrupt, self-seeking, and lascivious. She has failed to realize that the Old Law has been superseded and continues to use the Law (i.e. "works righteousness") as a tyrannical power. The prophet's task is to expose this devilish league of Satan and Antichrist and to point the way to a true, reformed, purified church which will be worthy of the heavenly Bridegroom. Particularly striking in Foxe's sense of solidarity with earlier rebels against the medieval church who, he believed, kept alive the secret, true, uncorrupted church even while Antichrist triumphed. This is indicated in the allusions to Hus, to the Wycliffites„ to the Poor Men of Lyons, and even to the despised Anabaptists. Foxe brackets these humble sectaries in his mind with the poor Christians of Act 2 and with his own fellow-Protestants and brothers in exile. Political allusions are evidently intended in the seduction of the three countries (or sovereigns) through the work of Satan. Asia's enslavement by the Turks doubtless represents the loss of Asia Minor and other parts of the Near East to Islam. When Foxe has Pseudamnus give Europus and Africus the titles of "Defender of the Faith" and "Most Christian King", he seems to imply that England and France, presumably in the persons of Henry VIII and Francis I, were flattered and deceived into believing that Pseudamnus was the real pope and Pornapolis the true church. Perhaps he is trying to show that England at least could be excused for being misled by such an impressive array of falsehood. It is rather difficult, however, to see why France at any time in the sixteenth century should be represented as returning to the true church, especially in 1551 when Henry II was persecuting the French Protestants. He was, indeed, simultaneously encouraging the German Protestants against the Emperor, but this hardly seems to justify Africus' return to the bosom of Ecclesia. Perhaps Foxe was just wildly optimistic or perhaps by the end of the play Africus stands for some other country.

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As the account above indicates, Christus Triumphans, though it is divided into acts and scenes, and has a chorus, is only superficially classical. Echoes of Terence and Plautus are distorted and ridiculous. For example, the old trick of bringing on a messenger who is so out of breath that he cannot tell his news hardly seems an appropriate way to announce the Resurrection. The circumlocutions, such as "buyers of broken chickpeas" and "that moisture trickling down your face", are heavyhanded. Dioctes' "if anyone asks, I wasn't here", the traditional trickster's appeal to the audience for protection, seems absurd in its present context. Saul's effort to bribe Polyharpax and the smelling salts brought on for the dying Nomocrates seem equally incongruous. They appeal even less to the modern reader than the more serious apocalyptic message of the play. Yet Foxe's "comedy" enjoyed some success in its own day. It was performed at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1572. It was translated into French in 1562 5 2 and possibly into English in 1579. 5 3 A century later, one Thomas Comber, a member of Sidney Sussex College, edited the Latin text as a book which, he says, "literary headmasters" may like to use in their schools. He had the pleasure of seeing it go into two editions, in 1672 and 1676. He intended it as a reading text, not as an acting piece, for, he says, "the devout aid author", who penned the play while in exile for his beliefs, never intended anything so shocking as an actual performance. His preface, published the year after Milton issued Samson Agonistes, illustrates the persistence of schoolmaster ideals for neo-classical drama. He notes that though Foxe reflects "the deft and sparkling wit" of Plautus and Terence, he uses pagan oaths only in the mouths of profane characters and he avoids Ovidian obscenities, the tricks of wily slaves, the twisted wits of Aristophanes, and the impurities of Petronius. This passage almost echoes Grimald's preface to Christus Redivivus, 130 years before. The editor also promises that this pious comedy will provide a warning against sin, an account of the miseries of 52

Le Triomphe de Jesus Christ, "Comedie apocaliptique, traduite de J. F. en rithm Françoise", by Jean Bienvenue. The Β.M. has a copy. ss Only a non-dramatic appendix remains; see Chambers, p. 549.

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the Church, and a vision of the triumph of Christ; it will "imbrue the minds of the young with rhetorical ... and tragic draughts from the pagan classics", and at the same time fill them with Christian doctrines and Christian faith. The hopes of the early Renaissance schoolmaster dramatists still lived in this seventeenth century editor.

6. CONCLUSION

With Christus Triumphans I conclude my account of the neoclassical Biblical drama in England. What significance has this body of literature in the history of the English theatre and in the development of Biblical drama in England? These dramatists may certainly be credited with an important share in introducing classical theory and practice in the universities. About a third of the recorded plays at the universities in the forties came from their pens. Moreover their prefaces — lacking only in the case of Absalom - are among the earliest attempts of sixteenth century dramatists to set down critical statements regarding their intentions and standards. Here Grimald, Christopherson and Foxe are in considerable agreement. All three claim that they owe something to classical models. All think of literature as a mirror or image of actual life and speak of their plays as setting this image clearly before their audiences. All agree that drama should provide models of virtue and warnings against vice. All feel that in using scriptural subjects they are availing themselves of material of the highest spiritual quality. All believe that one of their major functions is to create or increase faith. Considering the unanimity in their theories, the variety of their actual plays is astonishing. It is particularly remarkable in the case of their three tragedies. Christopherson's gentle didacticism is as different from the melodramatic sensationalism of Watson's Absalom as from the highly romantic manner of Grimald's Archipropheta. Grimald's half-medieval Resurrection play is unlike Foxe's strange "apocalyptic comedy". It is a fact, too, that all these men demonstrate considerable independence of their models.

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Absalom is perhaps the closest to a classical original. Christopherson is less theatrical and more didactic than Euripides. Foxe and Grimald used classical models but used them freely in accordance with their own original talents. Perhaps this independence of mind was the happiest augury for the future. It is perhaps as well that these men founded no school 54 in which their pupils wrote still more neo-classical dramas. Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists needed the example of classical form and structure; but they needed to use this with freedom and originality. Here some of the humanist dramatists showed them the way.

54

Clynne Wickham (Vol. II, p. 53) suggests a possible reason for this. He thinks that because the trend towards imitation of the classics and toward following classical precepts was "Italian inspired", it could not escape association in England with Rome, the Papacy, and Catholicism. "If the English Reformation (not forgetting the equivalent in Germany and other countries) was greeted on the continent by a Counter-Reformation, it could well be said that the Italian Renaissance, after an initial friendly welcome into England, was subsequently challenged by a counterRenaissance".

ν EARLY ELIZABETHAN BIBLICAL DRAMA

1. INTRODUCTION

Following the work of the university humanists, there seems to have been something of a lull in the writing of Biblical plays which is not easy to account for. Perhaps a statute of the last years of Henry VIII, which theoretically required interludes which "meddled" with "interpretation of scripture" 1 to obtain a permit, discouraged potential writers. However, one would have expected that Martin Bucer's passage on the drama in his De Regno Christi, dedicated to Edward VI in 1550, 2 would have had the opposite effect. Bucer supported the performance of plays in general as a worthy form of "honest recreation" for young men, provided the authors were known for their virtuous lives and sound doctrine, and provided the plays taught good lessons. A theologically trained committee was to be appointed to select the plays and to censor unsuitable works. Bucer had fairly clear ideas on subjects suitable for comedy and tragedy. While he allowed secular subjects in comedy, he preferred that plays on tragic themes be drawn entirely from the Biblical history of man after the Fall. He specifically mentions the quarrel between Abraham and Lot, Isaac's search for Rebekah, and the exploits 1

Statute of Henry V m , Cap. 1, 1543; quoted in Virginia C. Gildersleeve, Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1908), pp. 7-9. This act was not specifically aimed at the drama, but at any sermons, ballads, plays, etc. which might contain controversial or seditious matter. It would probably not be applied to the neoclassical dramatists, either. 2 I used the edition printed in Basle, 15S7, p. 206-216.

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of Jacob as promising subjects for plays which would both "teach and delight" their audiences. Edification was to be the keynote. Considering Bucer's eminence as a reformer and the dedication to the king these suggestions have almost the standing of an official pronouncement; but they do not seem to have been taken up at that time. Foxe's Christus Triumphans was published the next year, but he had been working on it since 1547. No other Biblical titles appear. Mary's reign is, not surprisingly, chiefly notable for scattered efforts to revive medieval drama in London, Lincoln, Canterbury, and perhaps Beverly. Jacob and Esau, a Protestant play, was entered in the Stationers' Register, but was not published. A group of new plays deriving ultimately from the continental Prodigal Son plays did appear either in Edward's reign or later in the decade - Lusty Juventus, Nice Wanton, The Disobedient Child, and Misogonus. All have links with the old youth plays mentioned in Chapter I and all are Protestant. However, in every case the parable is so freely treated that the plays hardly qualify as Biblical drama. All devote many scenes to the protagonist's life in sin, all emphasize discipline and obedience, all indulge in homily and chapter-and-verse paraphrase of scripture, and all, without, exception, lose the real point of the parable free, loving forgiveness — in a welter of tavern life, doctrinal tags, and sententious preachment. Lusty Juventus is of some historical interest in that, like Christus Triumphans, it displays the pervasiveness of the Antichrist idea. The Devil and Hypocrisy join forces against Good Counsel and the True Nature of God's Verity to prevent Juventus from reading the New Testament - Bale's familiar opposing forces in yet another form. The play ends with the triumph of righteousness, for Juventus is converted and becomes an example of the wholesome younger generation, eschewing a false and effete tradition. One would expect the religious situation at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign to favor a revival of specifically Protestant Biblical drama. The Bible, the symbol and watchword of the reform party, figured prominently in her coronation pageantry. When Flourishing Commonwealth had displaced Decayed Com-

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monwealth, Time and Truth came forward to proffer a handsome Bible to the queen who clasped and kissed it with appropriate fervor. She was compared on this occasion to Deborah, the valiant female judge of Israel (see Judges 5), and in her first Parliament Sir Nicholas Bacon's address to the throne likened her to "good King Hezekiah" and "noble Queen Hester". These were only the first of many compliments to the new queen based on Biblical allusions. The circumstances of Elizabeth's birth and reactions against the extremism of her sister, as well as the pressures of dynamic Protestant groups, forced the queen toward at least a moderate Protestant position. Her own tastes, whatever they were, 3 and her own instinct to delay and temporize, had to give way to the insistence of a strong Protestant group at home, reinforced by exiles returning from reform centers on the continent. Prominent lay exiles such as Sir Francis Knollys and Sir Anthony Cooke were closely in touch with Protestant divines who wanted a Protestant settlement. As the Marian bishops, including Watson and Christopherson,4 were forced out, their places were taken, some by bishops whom Mary had deprived, some by the Puritan exiles who had been in Frankfurt, Basle, and other Protestant centers on the continent. Thus Richard Cox (Grimald's old patron) became Bishop of Ely, Edmund Grindal of London, John Jewel of Salisbury, Edwin Sandys of Worcester, and Robert Home of Winchester. Matthew Parker, a moderate, became Archbishop of Canterbury. 5 Bale was too old for a bishopric but was installed as a canon of Canterbury. All over the country were deans, prebends, archdeacons, vicars and rectors who had been exposed to continental influence. It would be surprising if such a 3

The exact nature of Elizabeth's own opinions is uncertain. Temperamentally she may have favored the pageantry of the old rites, but she was careful to register quite early her stand on the Mass. On Christmas Day, 1558, Bishop Oglethorpe of Carlisle, who was celebrating in the Royal Chapel, insisted on elevating the host, contrary to the queen's directions; she walked out of the service. 4 All but one had gone by January, 1560. To their credit, most of them had refused to serve a Protestant establishment. Watson and Christopherson both died in prison. 5 Elton, p. 275-276.

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group did not produce some enthusiasts for Protestant plays based on the scriptures. The early years of Elizabeth did see something of a resurgence of Biblical drama. Cambridge University set the example. It had apparently not seen a Biblical play since Christopherson's Jephthe in 1544 and Ziegler's Heli in 1547/8, but had concentrated on such classics as Troades, Menaechmi, Stichus, and Oedipus. 6 From about 1560 on, though classical works continued to be popular, a number of Biblical plays were added to the repertoire. Trinity College presented Sapientia Solomonis (probably Sixt Birck's), Acolastus by Gnaphaeus, a "John Baptiste" (Buchanan's?), Foxe's Christus Triumphans, and Udall's Ezechias. This last was doubtless chosen, as I have already suggested because it praised the queen's father, Henry VIII, as a type of noble reformer and because those responsible for the choice hoped and expected that Elizabeth would continue to play the same rôle. It will be remembered that both Ezechias and Christus Triumphans underline the struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist and prophesy the destruction of the false party and the triumph of the faithful. This was evidently still a popular theme, considered suitable for an academic and courtly audience. In this connection it is worth mentioning that Bale's King John, which had a similar theme, may have been revived and played before Elizabeth when she visited Ipswich in 1561. 7 In schools, too, Biblical plays found some favor in the sixties. Shrewsbury School, chartered in 1551/2 by Edward VI, was especially noted for its Passion Play. The city of Shrewsbury had in the past been known for its mystery plays, performed in the old quarry outside the town. The boys took over the site and conceivably other traditions. Thomas Ashton seems to have produced religious plays (including a Julian the Apostate) both before and after he was made headmaster in 1561 and instantly created a great deal of interest in playacting among the boys. Sir Philip Sidney β The delightful naturalization of Roman comedy, Gammer Gurton's Needle, also belongs to this era. T The morality New Custom, published in 1571, makes use of the same theme.

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and Fulke Greville, who were at the school c. 1564-8, may have developed their interest in drama at that time. Five of Ashton's boys later acted in Richardus Tertius at St. John's, Cambridge. Contemporary accounts speak of the "marvellous greate paynes" Ashton took over his plays, and they probably helped the school's growth during his headmastership. It is sad that his Passion is lost, for it would have been interesting to see how he handled the theme so hallowed by medieval tradition. One wonders if it would have met the classical standards which Sidney and Greville later upheld. It was evidently considered doctrinally acceptable, for the queen herself twice planned to attend a performance, arriving too late for it in 1565 and in 1574/5 being obliged to change her travel plans "because of deathe [the plague?]". It is clear that she approved of Ashton and his work, for in addition to consenting to attend the plays, she authorized a grant to the school in 1571. A few months after she missed the 1565 performance of the Passion, Elizabeth was present at another schoolboy production, Sapientia Solomonis at Westminster School. This play will be discussed presently, together with Jacob and Esau (also written for schoolboys, though for what school is not known) and the English translation of Theodore Beza's Abraham Sacrifiant, published in 1575. Where the academic world led the way, the court seems to have followed. A court masque, The Wise and Foolish Virgins, presented in 1561, was based on the parable in Matthew 25 : 1-13. The parable exhorts Jesus' followers to be prepared for the catastrophic end which is imminent and concludes, "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of Man cometh". We have seen how popular eschatological themes were in this period; Foxe's use of this same parable in Christus Triumphans will be remembered. Probably, then, the masque was a spectacular representation of the foolish virgins who are shut out of the kingdom and the wise, faithful virgins who have anticipated the Bridegroom's coming. It may have been given some specific contemporary application, and, no doubt, somewhere in the masque was a well-turned compliment to the piety, wisdom, and prudence of the Virgin Queen.

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Two more points may be mentioned. First, the medieval cycles continued in many of their traditional centers such as York, Coventry, and Norwich. Many of these centers were far away from London, but nearer London, too, for example, at Chelmsford, Braintree, and other places in Essex, cycles and individual plays apparently flourished. Second, there was a flurry of interest in publishing Biblical plays old and new. It is interesting in view of what has already been said about the durability of the Antichrist theme that two of Bale's plays were republished after Elizabeth's accession, Three Laws in 1562 and God's Promises as late as 1577. The old political satire, Godly Queen Hester, came out in a new edition. Thomas Colwell, who reprinted Three Laws, also published King Darius and The Cruel Debtor in the sixties, and entered Susanna on the Stationers' Register. Other new titles were Marie Magdalene (published by Charlewood, the same man who reprinted God's Promises), and two of the school plays mentioned above, Jacob and Esau and Abraham's Sacrifice. The following table shows all the new plays in this period, as well as the lost Passion and two other lost plays, Samson (played at the Red Lion) and The Two Sins of King David. Date8

Author

Title

Auspices

1560/1 1560/1

Unknown Thomas Ashton

Red Lion Shrewsbury School

1561

Unknown

1562

Unknown

1565 1565

Unknown Adapted from Birck Wager

Samson (lost) Passion of Christ (lost) Wise and Foolish Virgins (lost) Two Sins of King David (lost) King Darius Sapientia Solomonis (MS.) The Cruel Debtor (fragment) Marie Magdalene Jacob and Esau Susanna Abraham's Sacrifice

1565/6 1566 1566 1568/9 1575 8

Lewis Wager Unknown Thomas Garter Translated from Beza

Court masque Unknown Unknown Westminster School Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown

I have given the earliest date when there is a record of the play, whether it is entered in the Stationers' Register or appears in print.

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A glance at the table shows that the shift away from New Testament, already noted in connection with the adaptations of Ralph Radoliffe, is also apparent here. Of the eleven titles, only four are from the New Testament, and two of these are based on parables, widely regarded as fiction rather than true history and therefore more susceptible to free dramatic treatment. If it were not for the Magdalene, a conservative, even old-fashioned play in many respects, and the lost Passion, we might be inclined to feel that New Testament subjects were being deliberately set aside in case they raised awkward doctrinal issues. The extant plays fall into two groups. King Darius, The Cruel Debtor, Mary Magdalene, and Susanna are naive, unpretentious works which make considerable use of the morality tradition. All but The Cruel Debtor, which has lost its first few pages, inform the buyer that so many players "may easily play" and were evidently intended for small groups of strolling players. 9 Again, all but The Cruel Debtor have prologues summarizing the story that is to be shown and both Susanna and Magdalene boast that since their stories have the authority of scripture, they are sure to be good and true. All aim to entertain and to edify. The three school plays, Sapientia Solomonis, Jacob and Esau, and Abraham's Sacrifice are more sophisticated, more learned, and more dependent on classical models. Both groups are of considerable interest. 2.

KING

DARIUS

The simplest and least pretentious offerings in the first group are King Darius and The Cruel Debtor. They are short, straightforward pieces, written without any act or scene division. Both recall Queen Hester in that they take place in a royal court, attack hypocrisy and flattery, and praise truth. In both the historical narrative has been supplemented with morality subplots. Darius 9

Darius needs six and Susanna eight. Magdalene claims to need only four players, but really needs five. The Cruel Debtor has only six parts. Craik points out that the appeal to the "good people" in Darius suggests a popular audience.

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also resembles Queen Hester in choosing for its subject a legendary "history" of little genuine religious significance and in giving the morality scenes a frankly English setting, indicated in this case by reference to Southampton, Peterborough, and Newgate prisons, and to the strife between Catholics and Protestants. However, as the story is weaker and the political satire less shrewdly focused, Darius is less effective than Hester. Its contemporary appeal must have been based on the public's fondness for debate and pageantry, and for crude didacticism and polemic. King Darius, i° advertised as "a pretie new enterlude both pithie and pleasaunt" is a delineation of a good, wise, courteous king, according to the Prolocutor. It follows the Bible closely. The scenes dealing with Darius and his court follow almost exactly the account in I Esdras 3, 4. Darius' feast is announced, Ethiopia, Media, Persia, and Judah invited, the banquet prepared and eaten, and the complimentary speeches delivered, all within two short scenes totaling about a hundred lines. The king's servants, oddly named Preparatus, Agreeable, Anagostes, and Optimates, 1 1 work swiftly, and his counselors Perplexity and Curiosity are quick with their advice. The final court scene is a little more elaborate. The dramatist introduces his sole improvement on the original in having Darius overhear the naive plot of the three young men to compete for his favor and in having their debate topics read out aloud. (In the Bible they are merely poked under the king's pillow while he is asleep). In turn the youths defend their theses. The first declares that wine is the strongest, the second that the king is the strongest, and the third that woman "is the greatest of myght". The speeches are point by point verse paraphrases of the original. The third speech (Zerubbabel's) is the longest and most effective. Woman, he says, who plants vineyards, sews garments, and gives birth to all mankind, can also win men from their homes, drive them to war and plunder, and make them bond-slaves. The King's Concubine, he concludes daringly, recently put on the royal crown and struck the royal face, while 10

The Story of Kyng Daryus, ed. James O. Halliwell (London, 1860). It was first published by Colwell in 1565. 11 I have modernized the spelling of the names.

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"The Kyng looked upon her / and durst say nothing (he was in such fere)". Surely woman, who can do such "preaty feats" has the greatest might of all. Having made his point, Zerubbabel goes straight on to describe the power and majesty of God. Acclaimed by Darius, he demonstrates his honesty as a true courtier for he declines riches and honor and instead reminds the king of his desire to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. He departs with the royal blessing. These events occupy only about a quarter of the text. Sandwiched between them in large chunks is a particularly uninspired antipapal morality. Three virtues, Charity, Equity, and Constancy, discourse in turn on charity, justice, and integrity, quoting frequently but not always accurately from the New Testament, the Book of Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus. Their opponents are a bullying, insolent braggart Iniquity and his friends Importunity and Partiality. Inquity lives in Rome and is the pope's son. The pope is described as powerful over many nations, an extortionate profiteer, who lives by the sweat of his victims. Charity offends Iniquity by reminding him that it is hard for the wicked to enter the kingdom of heaven. Drawing his dagger, Iniquity drives Charity from the stage with abusive and obscene language. Next Equity makes a pious effort to save the vices from themselves. Reminding them that the "bodye is but a very donge [dung]", she reproaches them for their evil doings. They are a deceitful generation, who will be destroyed and cast into "the lake that burneth with brimstone" unless they repent. She prays for them: "Plucke from them theyr malycyousnes, / Their papystry and all theyr coveytousness". However, she speaks to hardened hearts, for they only laugh at her and swear they will set snares and traps for Christ's flock. Equity appeals to the audience to Call to Chryst, The Lord most hyest, To save you from the Antichryst And hys papysticall lyne.

Further debate between Iniquity and the Virtues ends in their favor. In his fury at this, Iniquity hurls everything in sight at them,

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until he is set on fire and runs shrieking from the stage, while the virtues sing a hymn of triumph. Once more the forces of good have triumphed against the forces of Antichrist. The connections between this pale imitation of Bale and the historical scenes of this playlet at first seem rather tenuous, but Bevington (p. 176) points out that "the virtuous characters of the main plot embody the very qualities that are personified in the scenes of allegory", Zerubbabel's virtue being constancy and the king's charity and equity. Probably, too there is an implied contrast between the king and the foe, for Darius is represented as an ideal king, noble, virtuous, and courteous, willing to accept home truths from honest critics, generous in his rewards, and ready to use his riches and his store of corn and cattle to relieve the poor; while a few lines later, Iniquity describes how the pope loves flattery and squeezes money out of poverty-stricken worshippers. This contrast, together with the emphasis on the scriptures as a weapon against "malicious papystry", and Zerubbabel's elaborate compliments to women provide the justification for this pedestrian little play.

3.

THE CRUEL

DEBTOR

The Cruel Debtor (c. 1565), 1 2 by one Wager, who has eluded more exact identification, 13 is extant in two fragments which fortunately are long enough to give us a fairly good idea of the play. It is a more original re-creation than Darius and illustrates the tendency, observed in connection with the Prodigal Son plays, to emphasize the moral lesson rather at the expense of the religious meaning of the original parables. The source of the play, the parable of the Unmerciful Steward, 12

Entered in the Stationers' Register, 1565-6; the two fragments, entitled The Cruell Debtter, discovered at two different times in the present century, are printed in the Malone Society Collections, Π, ii (1923), pp. 142-4; IV (1911) pp. 315-23. 13 It is not known whether he was related to, or identical with, Lewis Wager, the author of Mary Magdalene or W. Wager, the author of several Protestant moralities.

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is a sort of corollary to the parable of the Prodigal Son. In the latter Jesus expressed His belief that a loving God forgives the sinner and welcomes him back to sonship. In the Unmerciful Steward 14 He showed what might happen if this forgiving spirit was not really understood, accepted, and passed on by the sinner. The steward who owed the king ten thousand talents begged to be released from his debt until his master was "moved with compassion" and forgave him. But the steward's contrition was merely prudential and superficial. Forgiveness had not become a force in his own heart. When his poorer fellow servant could not pay him the paltry hundred pence he had borrowed, the "cruel debtor" cast him in prison. His shocked fellows reported his unkind deed to the king and he was "delivered ... to the tormentors" for his hard-heartedness. Wager set this story in the palace of the good and wise King Basileus ("king"), where his honest and faithful steward, Proniticus ("faithful") keeps the books and handles the king's affairs diligently and well. Ophiletus ("debtor"), who owes the king so much money, seems not to be a steward, but an "unthryftly" gentleman of the court. The three vices, apparently other hangerson of the palace, are named Flattery, Rigor, and Simulation, and are carefully differentiated. Flattery is a clever liar and opportunist, Rigor an unpleasant bully, Simulation a deceiver. Flattery, Simulation's cousin, sees everything that goes on and insinuates himself into all ranks and professions. It is he who cloaks the pride and selfishness of the clergy in apparent humility, the indifference and selfishness of the magistrates in apparent affability, the hatred and greed of the common people in apparent good nature. He can fool anyone, but is never fooled himself. Probably little is lost from the beginning of the play, since the first fragment begins with a plot initiated by the Vices, a common opening gambit in morality plays. Rigor and Flattery, assuring each other that it is no deceit to deceive the deceitful Simulation, plan to stage a fight so that when Simulation tries 14

Matthew 18 : 23-35. The occasion of the parable is Peter's question, "How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" and Jesus' answer "until seventy times seven".

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to separate them, they will have an excuse to crack his head. It turns out just as they planned, except that Simulation sees through their devices and swears revenge on their "false subtle smylyng hartes". Parodying the theme of the parable, Flattery mockingly begs forgiveness, to which Simulation ironically replies, "I forgeve you as chrysten men theyr brother". Soon the Vices spy another chance of making mischief as Ophiletis discloses his disastrous financial state. He has lived beyond his means and station, spent wildly, borrowed freely. He wishes he had had "the grace to be wyse and polytycall". I never mynded to gather any good or treasure Only my harte was set to lyve in pleasure. 18

Rigor mutters "fyt matter for us", Flattery observes that a man "in sorrow and desolation" will listen to their evil counsel, and Simulation suggests that they all pretend to be very friendly. Ophiletis is taken in by their assumed sympathy and goes off with them to the tavern where presumably they persuade him that only flattery, pretense, and hard-heartedness can save him. Here there is a lacuna of two leaves. When the text resumes, Ophiletis, who has evidently been primed by the Vices to put on a good act, affects humility and lards his appeal with exaggerated praise of the king. A rather stern inquisition by Basileus makes it clear that the debtor is not only a "ryotous" wastrel, but a greedy and conceited social climber, who has been forced to borrow to feed his vanity and to raise himself above his proper station. Rigor whispers encouragement: "Weepe, body of God can you not weepe for a neede? You must loke pyteously if you intende to speede". 16 Here the second fragment breaks off, just as Rigor is about to defend his candidate, and we are left to imagine his ironic plea for mercy and the subsequent hardening of Ophiletis' heart. The morality subplot in this fragment is better integrated with the main story than is Darius and recalls the clever use of the vices in Godly Queen Hester. Flattery, Simulation, and Rigor are 15 16

Malone, Collections, I, iv, 11. 102-103. Compare Measure for Measure, Π, ii.

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different aspects of the villain's character and represent the three sins which Wager evidently felt the cruel debtor displayed. However, in complicating his villain's character, he somewhat weakened the impact of the parable. Jesus concentrated on a single point - the necessity of forgiveness, the evil consequence of failing to pass on to others the forgiveness man has received. Wager represents this point in the third Vice, Rigor, but puts two other Vices on the same plane. Ophiletis falls not only into hardheartedness (for which we hope he was severely chastised in the end) but also into flattery and deceit. Other failings are also mentioned: covetousness, wastefulness, pride, ambition. It is a commentary on the times that Ophiletis is chastised the most bitterly for ostentatiousness and for not maintaining a manner of life appropriate to his rank. Pryde and presumptyon hereto have thee brought Much to sped and lash out, was ever thy thought, A sumptuous table thou woldest keepe every day, Beyond thy degree thou dydest excede in aray. 1 7

4. THE LIFE AND REPENTANCE

OF MARIE

MAGDALENE

In The Lije and Repentance of Marie Magdalene,18 the author, Lewis Wager, 19 returned to one of the most popular and widely dramatized of medieval figures and certain touches - for example, the mention of Mary's parents, her travels, and her castle suggest an acquaintance with a medieval source such as the Digby Magdalene. He also owes much to the morality tradition and something to Bale. However, in the main his interpretation is 17

Malone, Collections, I, iv, 11. 194-198. Printed by John Charlewood (London, 1566), and reissued by him the next year; edited by Frederick Ives Carpenter (Chicago, 1904); this edition is cited as Carpenter. 10 Wager is described on the tide page as a learned clerk, but a search of the registers at Oxford and Cambridge reveals no trace of him. We know he was a clergyman, rector of Garlickhithe in 1560. Connections with the author of The Cruel Debtor and with Wager the author of a Protestant morality have been suggested but not proved. 18

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fresh and personal and derives from his own reading of the New Testament. Wager followed the tradition of the Western church in identifying the Mary Magdalene of all four Passion narratives, from whom seven demons were cast out (Luke 8 : 2), with the anonymous "woman ... who was a sinner" of Luke 7, who washed Jesus' feet with precious ointment. According to St. Luke, this incident took place at the house of Simon the sinner, whose offhand hospitality was in marked contrast to Mary's humility. When Simon expressed his disgust that a teacher like Jesus should allow a disreputable woman even to touch him, Jesus replied with the parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7 : 41-43), making the point that the one who had been forgiven most should respond with the deepest love. "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much", concluded Jesus, and He dismissed the penitent: "Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace". This conversation, which occupies only fifteen verses, provides the concluding episode of Wager's play. The earlier scenes - over four-fifths of the whole - follow the traditional lines of a religious morality, for which the only scriptural justification is Luke's mention (8 : 2) of "Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils". To the historical characters Mary, Simon the Pharisee, and Jesus, Wager added a group of allegorical figures who embody the struggle going on within Mary's soul. The Vices, led by Infidelity, are Pride of Life, Cupidity, and Carnal Concupiscence. They are eventually opposed by the Law and Knowledge of Sin and by Christ Himself. Repentance, Faith, Justification, Love are in this play not so much independent virtues who take part in the struggle as states of mind, which Mary eventually achieves; but at first Infidelity and his helpers have their way with her. Blinded with vanity, she is already ripe for sin when they approach. Irritated with her "most bungarliest tailor" whose cutting has not done justice to her small waist, she is ready to be consoled with a little flattery which will put her back in a good humor. Infidelity diplomatically censures the tailor ("in the myddes they set the piece that is worst"), praises her fresh beauty, and, representing himself as an old friend of the family who

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dandled her when she was a baby, offers to introduce her to the world. The Temptation scene which follows is diverting, as each of the subordinate Vices makes a special appeal to some youthful weakness. Each represents himself as something respectable. This disguising emphasizes the individual soul's capacity for interpreting experience and its consequent dependence on God's grace. Cupidity, introduced as Utility, dresses her in the latest fashion and tells her to think of herself first; Carnal Concupiscence, calling himself Pleasure, inflames her with lust and greed; while Pride, masquerading as Honor, encourages her to despise God and commit idolatry, while Infidelity tells her to believe that she herself is a goddess. 2 0 They work on her vanity with hints on improving her beauty by dyeing her hair, using cosmetics to cover the "fautes" (i.e. blemishes) in her complexion, and wearing a lownecked dress to attract velvet-coated young men, whose noses, they tell her, will bleed with desire. Mary protests, "What, wantons, are ye not ashamed?" but is really delighted with all this attention and listens carefully when they advise her to seek new lovers constantly, to avoid the monotonous slavery of marriage, and not to fear old age, for, as Infidelity tells her in the person of Prudence, an old prostitute can always "play the baude" and make money on the side by exploiting poor tenants. 2 1 Mary goes out to feast with them, Infidelity popping back to tell us that she is embracing sin with gratifying eagerness: "I never saw a bolder harlot in my life". Meanwhile Simon and Malicious Judgment bitterly discuss the new teacher, who reviles the scribes and Pharisees, fraternizes with the poor, works miracles, and claims to be the Messiah. They plot to expose Him as a charlatan. Just as Mary returns boasting 20

The audience would think of the serpent's promise to Eve, "Ye shall be as gods" (Gen. 3 : 5). 21 Though Wager's central concern is with individual salvation, he does not entirely neglect social ethics. Infidelity is explicit about ways to make money. Opresse your tenantes, take fines, and raise rentes; Hold up your houses and lands with their contents; Bye great measure, and sell by small measure, This is a way to amplifie your treasure (Carpenter, p. 35).

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of her conquests in language which indicates the coarsening of her nature, the Law takes the center of the stage. An exciting debate between him and Infidelity follows. The latter's arguments are specious and unconvincing, but the Law, though he threatens Mary with "eternali fyre" and brings in Knowledge of Sin to mirror her wrongdoings and torture her conscience, confesses himself inadequate to save her. By the law Mary is condemned. She is ready to give way to despair when Christ appears, banishes Infidelity and his fellows, raises the prostrate Mary and promises her forgiveness. He calls Faith and Repentance to her aid, she confesses that without grace she can do nothing, and Christ assures her that His grace is sufficient and promises her that love will follow faith. Here a morality plot would naturally end, but Wager included the scene in which Mary emptied the alabaster box of ointment over Jesus' feet (Luke 7) so that he could contrast the unredeemed Pharisee with the redeemed prostitute and display her humility and love as the "fruictes" of repentance. The plot of Simon and Malicious Judgment to expose Jesus as a fraud does not come to anything, for the conspirators shrink in silence as Jesus explains that as the Son of God He has come to call sinners to repentance. The symbol of the sinner saved in spite of herself, Mary comes in attended by Justification and Love. The latter restates the theme: the Law was helpless in the face of sin until Christ came: By the word came faith; Faith brought penitence; But bothe the gyft of God's magnificence. Thus by Faith onely Marie was justified ... From thens came love, as a testification Of God's mercy and her justification.22

The meaning of the play seems to be as follows: Mary, having fallen into infidelity (here lack of faith), is tempted further into pride, greed, and lust until consciousness of sin, measured by the principles expressed in the Ten Commandments, brings her to an awareness of her sinful condition and the prospect of damnation. Helpless under the bondage of the law, she despairs, until Christ 22

Carpenter, p. 85.

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on His own initiative (not hers) seeks her out and, asking only an uncertain gesture of trust, bestows on her the gifts of Faith and Repentance. She is then able to affirm her belief more clearly and to exhibit its fruits, a spirit of humility, a capacity for love, and an assurance of justification. She is justified by faith. Wager has embodied his message in lively scenes and in simple but amusing and appealing characters. All the Vices are full of life, especially Infidelity, a wicked rake-about-town whose diplomacy in winning Mary's favor is entertaining to watch. He agrees that her tailor has not done her figure justice, praises her dress, admires her golden hair and her "eyes gray as glasse", and assumes an avuncular leer which completely takes her in. He knows that large houses are full of naughty servants and that pretty girls can be tempted by fair young men with flaxen beards. Mary herself is a pretty, charming coquette, vain of her beauty, her small waist, her musical accomplishments, and her excellent education, as good as a gentlewoman's. Her bubbling delight when she is the center of attention, her easy responsiveness to suggestion (she is horrified when they find "about her nose ... litle prety holes" and is ready to buy the best cosmetics), and her recollection, even in the full awareness of her seductive charm that The swete violets and lylies flourishe not alway The rose soone drieth, and lasteth not a day 23

all make her a sympathetic figure whose despair and reformation are not incredible. As Carpenter points out (p. xxvi) there are in the play signs of the direct or indirect influence of Bale. Wager does use two of Bale's more striking characters - Infidelity and Law - he burlesques the Latin Mass, he mocks at hypocritical friars, he urges the constant study of the Bible. In spite of these reminiscences of Bale and his followers, I am more struck by how differently Wager uses these by now hackneyed elements in Protestant polemic. Wager is not, like the previous generation, violently anti-Catholic, nor does his symbolism operate on several 2S

Carpenter, p. 34. The "carpe diem" idea was often associated with the temptation of lust; compare the Faerie Queen, Book II.

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levels as Bale's does. Infidelity is never, as at some points in Three Laws, the Roman Catholic faith, but simply lack of faith, a turning of the soul away from God. Law does not, as in Bale, represent "works" righteousness or the tyranny of canon law or soul-destroying regulations for ceremonial. It is simply, as in St. Paul, the Law of Moses, the schoolmaster whose function is to lead men to Christ. The vices are not identified with specifically "papistical" abuses, but are universally recognized sins which beset every human being. Finally, though the abortive conspiracy against Christ and the discomfiture of Infidelity may be a faint recollection of the machinations of Antichrist and his overthrow, Wager is not really thinking in terms of party strife or eschatological struggle at all. Rather he sees the human soul, wavering between faith and unfaith, turned toward God's grace by the power of Christ, whose personal appeal is to the individual human heart. The emphasis on justification by faith is, of course, characteristically Protestant. Wager's play is probably the most genuinely religious and devotional in this period. 2 4

5.

THE MOST VIRTUOUS

AND

GODLY

SUSANNA

Thomas Colwell, who published both Darius and The Cruel Debtor, entered Thomas Garter's Susanna in the Stationers' Register in 1568/9. We do not know whether he actually printed it at that time or not. The edition we have claims to be the first and was issued by Colwell's successor, Hugh Jackson, in 1578. 25 Like Darius, it is based on a narrative in the Apocrypha, but one with more potentialities for dramatic treatment. 24

There is a good discussion of Mary Magdalene in Bevington, pp. 171-75. Jackson married Colwell's widow and took over the business. The title page reads: "The Commody of the most vertuous and Godlye Susanna, never before this tyme printed. Compiled by Thomas Garter. Imprinted at London in Fleet Street, beneath the Conduite, at the sign of St. John the Evangelist, by Hugh Jackson, 1578". The play was reprinted in the Malone Society Reprints (Oxford, 1936). We know nothing of the author. Perhaps he was related to Bernard Garter, an antipapal writer of the same period. 25

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The original story occupies only one long chapter and wastes no words. The virtuous and beautiful Susanna, wife to the honorable and rich Joachim, has been brought up by her worthy parents to live according to Moses' law. Now she is the victim of a cruel plot. Two judges, attracted by her beauty, mutually admit their lust and plan to trap her. Hiding in the garden where she is about to bathe, they wait until the maids have been sent for soap and oil, seize Susanna, and threaten to defame her if she refuses to lie with them. She does refuse, and when her screams bring the servants, the judges insist that a young man has been with her. They tell the same story in the assembly the next day and Susanna is condemned as an adulteress. She calls on God, who raises up the youth Daniel in her defence. By clever questioning Daniel trips the judges into contradicting each other and betraying themselves. They are put to death, while Susanna and her family praise God for her deliverance. Garter was quick to see that this dramatic and edifying tale could be made into a play rich in attractions for an Elizabethan audience. It had an appealing, virtuous heroine, possibilities for character contrast between her impeccable family and the wicked judges (also called elders), a ready-made intrigue, and a most satisfactory dénouement in which the wicked were punished and the virtuous rescued from disgrace and danger. Moreover, the themes of the story would readily be given contemporary application. 2 6 Chief among these themes was the timeless problem of the evil judges who betrayed their high calling by their sinfulness and hypocrisy. Garter evidently decided to focus attention on them by inventing new scenes and characters drawn from the morality tradition. He introduced Satan himself to initiate the action, supplied him with a valuable henchman in the vice 111 Report (his virtuous counterpart True Report, appears later in the play), 26

Susanna was a favorite subject in the art and literature of the Renaissance. Over a dozen Susanna plays had been written on the Continent by 1566, and Garter may well have known some of them. Seej Marion T. Herrick, "Susanna and the Elders in Sixteenth Century Drama", Studies in Honor of T. W. Baldwin (Urbana, 1964), pp. 125-35.

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and gave the judges appropriate abstract names, Voluptas and Sensualitas. Satan, after reminding the audience that he can creep into men's hearts at will, summons his crafty child, 111 Report, and flatters him into helping him in an attack on the well-known virtue of Susanna. "Let us see if God with all His myght / Can defende this soule from auncient spyght" 2 7 reminds us of Satan's challenge to God at the beginning of the book of Job. Ill Report, whose attempts to appeal to pride, gluttony, and envy in Susanna have already failed, addresses the audience, lamenting ironically that Susanna does not lie late in bed on frosty mornings, or covet more gold than is right "for needful use". Sloth or greed would make his work so much easier. In contrast, he easily deceives Voluptas and Sensualitas, who appear at this point already suffering from the pains of lust. Under the pretense of being a doctor who can help them, he extracts ten pounds for a cure, and after several obscene jokes, promises to meet them again in a day or two. In another scene for which there is no hint m the Apocrypha, Joachim, Susanna's virtuous husband, discusses the burdens of public office with the two judges. He fears that the feet of him who "doth the people guide" will "sometime slide" into dishonesty or unrighteousness. The judges, whose hypocrisy is contrasted with Joachim's anxious conscientiousness, assure him that no such thing can occur while he has such faithful assistants as they are. Unconvinced, Joachim prays that God will guide him in his high office. Susanna joins them at this point, which provides occasion for some light domestic banter and for a colloquy between the two elders about her beauty and their desire for her. (The stage direction reads "The Judges eyes shall never be of [off] her"). Left alone to idle over their law books they plan an assault on Susanna. It must be soon, for, they argue, When that we are dead and gone, then rest we in the ground And out of doubt besyde this life none other life is found. 2 &

It must be secret and circumspect because of their public position. 37

Ll. 115-116. Garter's style is appalling. Some of the lines sound like Bottom's "Pyramus and Thisbe". 28 Ll. 437-438.

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111 Report returns at this point to taunt them and to suggest that they take her in secret. This dialogue is, as usual, obscene. He comments on their departure "Must not a common welth / Be needes in good health / That hath such Rulers?" Now the virtuous Joachim reappears, still fearful that he will not fulfill all the obligations of his responsible position. Once again his concern for the ethical demands of his office and indeed of earthly life in general, is contrasted with the "carpe diem" philosophy of the elders. When he has gone, the wicked elders return "Susannas haunt to spye", and hide themselves, while we hear the pious Susan thanking God for her "loving Spouse" and for their prosperity, but hoping that God will give her strength in case "any storme doe fall". In the main the scene in which the elders tempt Susan follows the original story. There are some small changes. It is made clear that the door is not only shut but locked (the maid says "Prove it with your foote"). Sensualitas complains that "Cupids flames doe burne my harte". Susan gives them a chance to escape, promising not to tell on them. Not all the servants believe the accusations of the elders. One prays that God will defend the innocent and another, True Report, reminds the company that Susanna's reputation has always been good and warns the judges that they may be punished for their perfidy. Susanna's short speech in the Apocrypha (verses 22-23) is enlarged into a substantial appeal to God, Who lives for ever and sees everything, to support her and defend her innocence. The parents' comments are also extensive. It is established that they are God-fearing, righteous folk. The trial scene follows the original narrative, with a few additions. Ill Report repeats and misrepresents the judge's opening speeches. The judge explains (to the elders) that witnesses should tell the truth and (to Susanna) that judges must be impartial. When Daniel comes with all the assurance of a Vindicta Dei to her rescue, Susanna swoons for joy. Daniel reprimands the judge for not distinguishing bad witnesses from good and points out to the elders that they who should be models and leaders of the people must now be punished as bad examples. Ill Report is delighted at their doom and is the crier who announces it. The

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elders whose "bloody robes" both symbolize their cruelty and presage their deaths, do "make a good end" in that they repent their sins, denounce lust and betrayal of office, and beg God to receive their sobbing sorrowful spirites". Such deaths, as Herrick points out, are thoroughly in the medieval tradition. They are stoned before all the people (this was probably done with bloodsoaked sponges) and 111 Report puts on one of their gowns. 2 9 He will be hanged, too, he is told, but he thinks he knows better, for "the world goeth not so". However, he has reckoned without his father, The Devil, who comes to take him away and punish him in hell for his failure to corrupt Susanna. The play closes with an antiphonal thanksgiving from the whole family and prayers for the Queen, the Council, the Commons, and the assembled company. It is interesting that, in emphasizing the piety of Susanna, Garter has taken pains to emphasize as well the solid excellence of her family background - her righteous God-fearing family, her honorable respected husband. These facts were established by the apocryphal author, but Garter enlarged on them. Susan has been raised by her family to study the law, to visit the poor, to be faithful and obedient to God, and to accept whatever "thrall" He sees fit to lay upon her. As a result, in contrasting the judges with Susanna and her husband, Garter has not merely set wickedness and hypocrisy against virtue and honesty. There is a religious contrast. Voluptas and Sensualitas are pagans. They do not hope for a future life, but seek the transitory pleasures of the flesh, call on pagan gods, and assume that the true God is dead and that their evil deeds will go unpunished. Susanna and Joachim, on the other hand, know that this life is important because decisions made in it are made under God. They strive to do right, believe that God watches and guards the innocent, and pray constantly to Him for grace and guidance. In addition, Garter underlines the soundness of the family relationship even when he is not pointing the contrast with the elders. The relationship between Susanna and Joachim is drawn with some sensitivity. 29

Herrick comments, "There is no classical restraint and no observance of the decorum that forebade the mingling of tragic matter with clownish comedy".

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They tease each other as people who are confident in mutual affection. Joachim pretends that he is a meek, henpecked husband, bullied by a shrewish wife. He pretends he has to obey her, as he follows her out to dinner, though he adds, "so shall you me, obay another tyme". He has complete faith in her, though he is acutely distressed when she is accused. Her parents, too, are loyal to her when she comes to trial. Their reactions to the elders' accusation is neatly contrasted. The mother is sure that no child of hers would commit adultery, but the father, sighing that the flesh may be frail, is less certain, though he believes that God will defend the innocent against injustice. Both of them are happy and thankful when their daughter is proved innocent, and their prayers and hers close the play. Garter worked his little play out carefully 30 and was successful in what he set out to do - entertain his hearers with a sensational and edifying tale. He made all his points clearly and underlined them. Everyone who saw or read the play would remember that lust and betrayal of high office were sins to be punished, that chastity, responsibility, and faith in God would bring their own reward. As Garter claimed in the prologue "the Story being good, the matter also true", the play depicted "a matter olde, as it were done anew". It was also (1. 19) "rather grave and sad" but "mixed with mirth". These phrases and others like them suggest that Garter knew he was writing a sort of tragicomedy. At the end, the father recalls how they all expected Susanna's death, yet "she lives still, what joy lyke this on earth?" God preserved her. Susanna, too, praises God. That me doest help myraculously and eake my foes confound I was but dead, and Thou to lyfe restored me silly wight.31 30

The stage directions throughout the play are unusually detailed and clear and suggest that Garter visualized the action as he wrote. For example, the maids, who have forgotten the soap and oil, go to fetch them and are directed to shut the door, evidently a real one, as one of the girls tells the other "Proue [i.e. test] it with your foote". Craik (p. 17) thinks the stage was divided by a partition running from front to back, with the "orchard" on one side, representing variously the place where the elders looked at their books, the place of the trial, and the site of the stoning. 31 LI. 1428-29.

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A pure and chaste young woman, brought by ugly villainy to the lowest point of misery and almost to death, is through divine intervention rescued for life and happiness. "She lives still, what joy lyke this on earth?" not only looks back to the medieval miracle plays and Resurrection plays, but forward to Shakespeare's "resurrections" of Marina and Hermione.

6.

SAPIENTIA

SOLOMONIS

Sapientia Solomonis, 3 2 the oldest of the three extant school plays, had been published in 1540 in Oporinus' anthology, Dramatica Sacra. Its author was the influential educator and Protestant dramatist Sixt Birck, who wrote his many Biblical plays for the students of St. Anna's gymnasium, Augsburg, where he taught for sixteen years. A student of political theory and of Renaissance ideas of kingship, Birck was particularly interested in the civic virtues and was eager to make his students good citizens as well as good Protestants. Solomon's reputation as a wise and just ruler no doubt attracted him. It certainly dictated the choice and shaping of his material. His Solomon is thoroughly whitewashed. Nothing is said of his extravagances, his many wives and concubines, his worship of Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh, and Moloch, nor of the punishment with which the Lord threatened him at the end of his life. Birck took from the long account in Kings 2-11 3 3 only four incidents, Solomon's prayer for an understanding heart, his settlement of the quarrel between the two women over the baby, the negotiations with Tyre about the purchase of the materials for the temple (all from Chapters 3-5), and the visit of the Queen of Sheba (Chapter 10). He uses historical characters such as Azarias and Adoniram, but does not really give them much to do. A large part of the play is given over to praise of 32

British Museum, Add. MS. 20061. Sapientia Solomonis has been edited by Elizabeth Rogers Payne, Yale Studies in English, L X X X I X (New Haven, 1938); cited as Payne. 33 It is evident from the way the references are numbered that Birck used the Vulgate. He also used Josephus for certain details about the temple and for an anecdote about Solomon answering riddlee.

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Solomon and discussion of various aspects of kingship and of predestination and divine providence. The education of women is defended in the last act, during Sheba's visit. The play is static, wordy, and tiresome. Still, one can see why it was chosen for performance before Elizabeth by the Westminster School (where incidentally the queen herself had commanded the institution of the school play in 1560). The theology was orthodox Calvinism. The portrait of the wise, just, discreet, modest ruler lent itself to compliments on the royal visitor's wisdom, and the appearance of the Queen of Sheba provided opportunities for praising Elizabeth's beauty and her excellent education. The fact that the Queen of Sheba had taken a long and arduous journey to visit Solomon could be turned into a graceful allusion to Princess Cecelia of Sweden, who was visiting Elizabeth at this time and who accompanied her to the Westminster performance on January 17,1565/6. However, Birck's play was not presented as it left his hands. At some point, either at Trinity College, where a play of this title was performed in 1559-60, or at the school, an adapter was put to work to liven the play up and make it more attractive to the taste of the time. His additions are of three kinds: an enlargement of the comic scenes, the introduction of allegorical figures, and the compliments to Elizabeth and her companion. Birck's few comic passages centre on Marcolph 34 the king's jester who is something of a Plautine braggart and trickster. The adapter wrote a much longer part for him. In the scene where the women quarrel over the baby, Marcolph is given a tasteless, scurrilous, satirical attack on women - their noisy chatter, their greed, their gluttony, their filthiness, their cosmetics which only thinly cover wrinkles and foul skin. One of the women scratches Marcolph's face and Solomon has to send him off to wash the blood off. His second big scene is given over to horseplay with the temple builders. A carpenter-dentist squares the fool's head with his axe and cuts out two of his teeth. Probably the boy actors enjoyed these crude scenes. The adapter's second change is the addition of three allegorical figures, Wisdom, Justice, and Peace, who are aspects of 34

For the legends of Marcolph and Solomon, see Payne, pp. 30-33.

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Solomon's character and rule, and who appear in person in answer to his prayer for an understanding heart. Wisdom promises him this and the gift of writing proverbs and songs, while Justice promises prudence and good judgment. Peace begins by quoting Psalm 85, "righteousness and peace have kissed each other". In this great king's reign, she says, she and justice truly embrace. She will bring wealth and long life. The three make brief reappearances in the course of the play, for example, to rejoice over the building of the temple. Of course, the whole play is an implied compliment to Elizabeth, but at the beginning and end she is specifically praised. "Blessed Solomon will see presently another ruler greatly blessed by the same tokens and the same good omens, and likewise administering justice and the law to the people whom God gave her to rule over". The epilogue praises God for a ruler who rivals Solomon in wisdom, justice, and mercy. As Solomon restored the living baby to its true parent, continues the writer, "Our Queen restored her sons to the true Church, but she gave back to the adulterous mother the false progeny, sunk in the blind night of superstition ... Solomon built a holy temple to God; our queen held nothing more important than to renew quickly the ritual of holy worship which had been overthrown". A prayer for the queen, nobles, and people concludes the play. No trouble or expense was spared in this production. The costumes were hired from the Revels and a tailor expended "a hole day" and "a thousand of small pinnes" in making them fit. The sets included the city and temple of Jerusalem and its towers. There seems to have been some attempt at period effects in Sheba's headdress, golden turbans, black make-up for the guards, and Solomon's signet ring. A fine realistic touch was the real baby. The accounts state that twelvepence were given "to the woman that "brawght her childe to the stage and there attended upon it". Two mysterious items are "a haddock occupied in the play" - in the feast? - and "dredge to clear the children" - presumably something for their voices. 3 5 Another expense was the manuscript, written in the beautiful print-like script of young 35

See the bill for the performance, printed in Payne, between pp. 40-41.

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Master Allen, the second master's sou, who received six and eightpence for making two copies. One of these, which once belonged to Horace Walpole, may be seen today in the British Museum. Bound in scarlet vellum and still bearing the "sylken ribben strings" mentioned in the list of expenses, it is a handsome and fascinating relic of a royal occasion at Westminster. 3 6

7.

ABRAHAM'S

SACRIFICE

Beza's Abraham Sacrifiant37 was one of the classics of the Calvinist theatre. Beza wrote it in the first flush of his conversion (1549), soon after he fled from France to Switzerland. 38 The students of the Academy of Lausanne performed it, in a hall recently used by the Bishop of Lausanne to try ecclesiastical cases, and it was published in Geneva in 1550. The play was then and for a long time afterwards immensely popular. It was reprinted often, 3 9 translated into the major European languages, and played countless times to enthusiastic audiences. A contemporary speaks of the tears he shed over it. The extraordinary thing is that such a popular work by one of Calvin's chief followers was not translated into English sooner. By the time Arthur Golding's translation was published in 1577, it was too late; Bible 36

See Payne pp. 1—9 where she traces the history of the manuscript. Another copy, in existence after 1854, has since been lost. 37 Théodore de Bèze, Abraham Sacrifiant (Geneva, 1550); Theodore Beza, A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, tr. Arthur Golding (London, 1577). Both French and English versions are reprinted in the edition by Malcolm W. Wallace (Toronto, 1906). This edition cited as Wallace. 38 Raymond Lebègue (La Tragédie Française de la Renaissance, Brussels 1944), plausibly suggests that Hugenots such as Beza were particularly attracted to Abraham and saw in his history a reflection of their own. They too had left home and kindred as an act of faith and hope. The key chapter was Hebrews 11 : "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen ... By faith Abraham, when he was called ... obeyed ... By faith he sojourned in a land of promise, as in a strange country ... for he looked for a city ... whose builder and maker is God". 39 Ten times in the sixteenth century, thirteen more times in the seventeenth.

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plays had become, for the time being, passé and Beza's masterpiece had little or no effect on the English theatre. This being the case, only a short account of it will be given here. It has been thoroughly studied and analyzed by historians of the French theatre. 40 Beza's chief source is Genesis 22 : 1-19, which tells how Abraham, following God's command, goes to the land of Moriah to sacrifice his only son. He has Isaac bound on the altar when an angel of God stays him. The providential ram caught in a thicket is slain instead and the angel rehearses the blessing which promises that Abraham's seed shall be multiplied and that in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Following medieval 41 and earlier humanist treatments, Beza elaborated this simple account so as to bring out the drama and pathos inherent in it. Sarah (who is not mentioned in Genesis 22) is brought in for a debate with Abraham about the wisdom of making the journey to Moriah. This debate supplies some conflict and clarifies Abraham's motives. The sacrifice scene elaborates the character and plight of Isaac. It has been clear from the first scene that he has been brought up to be obedient and unselfish. Now he is tested, and though at first he pleads for mercy, becomes a willing and obedient sacrifice. His chief concern is for his mother's grief. Beza's characters are convincing and express their love for each other and their anxieties and hopes in simple, unaffected language. Isaac may owe something to Iphigenia in his spontaneity, his terror of death, and the clear-sightedness with which he comes to see that his death may be in accordance with divine will. Abraham's agony is expressed with economy and power, his involuntary dropping of the knife (a touch so far as I know peculiar to Beza) being particularly effective. In the interests of economy and simplicity, Beza dropped certain features common in medieval versions, notably the use of allegorical figures, the scenes in 40

See Wallace's introduction; Lebegue, Ch. XVI, passim; Pieter Keegstra, Abraham Sacrifiant de Theodore de Bèze et le Theatre Calviniste de 1550-1566 (The Hague, 1928); Jonkers, Le Protestantisme et le Théâtre de la Langue Française, pp. 98-105. 41 Notably Le Mistére du Viel Testament, see analysis in Wallace, pp. xxxviii-xlii.

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heaven, and the long preparation for the journey to Moriah. Unlike most medieval versions and unlike the Bible, he does not bring in God in person. The angel is the divine spokesman throughout. Beza made other changes to underline the points he wished to make. A prologue tells the audience they will hear "no trifling toyes, but grave and wondrous geere" - the temptation and trial of Abraham, whom they will see "justified / By faith". The epilogue reminds them that this is "no peynted tale", but a true story showing the wisdom of trusting in God's providence. Abraham's monologues and prayers emphasize his belief that God is always laboring for man's good, though man is sometimes too shortsighted to see this. Abraham has learnt this truth since he left his old home to avoid the worship of "a thousand forged gods". Perhaps the argument between Sarah and Abraham was suggested to Beza by that between Agamemnon and Clytemnestra over Iphigenia, but he uses it to bring out the contrast between Abraham, who has complete faith in God's providence, and Sarah, who is still fearful of the future and tries to keep her husband and son at home. Sarah represents natural man, who cannot trust beyond his senses, while Abraham is the man of faith, whose trust in God makes him capable of complete obedience. Both realize fully that the death of their son means not only personal loss but the end of their hopes for the future of the family; but by the end of the play Sarah too understands that human love and aspiration are not enough. They cannot defeat man's lower nature, which can only be overcome by obedience, faith, and God's grace. Beza uses the shepherds, too, as a chorus. Their meditation on the mutability of all things reminds man that he should put his hopes not on nature or the things of this world, but on God, Who changes not. One of Beza's most striking additions is the figure of Satan, who first appears, early in the opening scene, after Abraham has made a general affirmation of his faith in God's providence, but before the angel's command has put him to the extreme test. Satan, dressed "in the habit of a monke", gloats over his power, exerted through devils and the clergy,

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There lechours, drunkards, gluttons overfedd Whose noses shine faire tipped with brazell r e d . 4 2

He plans to break down Abraham's resolution, and eavesdrops during Abraham's debate with Sarah, raging with frustration because Abraham is firm. Again, he stands by unseen when Abraham agonizes over the sacrifice of Isaac, hoping to bring him to despair. "Now he is down, if God send no relief", he cries, but Abraham, resolving to obey God's will at all costs, binds his son to the altar. By this final demonstration of obedience Satan is put to flight, and we see him no more. Golding's careful line-by-line translation is rather literal but is often quaintly appealing, and sometimes achieves a poetic quality, for example in the song of Abraham and Sarah near the opening of the play. He conveys quite well in English the charm and unity of tone of the original. How much of a reading public it found, we do not know. So far as our records go, it was not performed in England, and left no mark on the history of English Biblical drama.

8.

THE HISTORY

OF JACOB AND ESAU

Jacob and Esau,43 the only extant native example of a neoclassical Biblical comedy in this period, was published in 1568, though it was probably written several years earlier. 44 it is not known who the author was — perhaps William Hunnis or Nicholas Udall — nor, except that it is pretty clearly a school play, do we know what audience or players he wrote for. On the evidence of the play, the writer was a careful student of Roman comedy as well as of the Bible and was acquainted, probably at first hand, with Calvin's teaching on predestination. Like Terence and like the authors of several of the youth and 42

Wallace, p. 8. I have been obliged to use the modernized edition in J. S. Farmer, Six Anonymous Plays, Second Series (London, 1906). Cited as Farmer. 44 It was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1557/8, but only printed, by Henry Bynneman, ten years later. 43

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Prodigal Son plays, his theme turns on the contrast between two young men. However, he is not concerned, like (for example) the authors of The Disobedient Child or Misogonus, with the results of obedience to good training and good precepts. Quite the contrary. Educators labor in vain against the stern realities of predestination. This doctrine is the theme of the play and is announced by the prologue. ... before Jacob and Esau yet born were, Or either done good, or ill perpetrate: As the prophet Malachi and Paul witness bear, Jacob was chosen and Esau reprobate: Jacob I love (saith God) and Esau I hate, For it is not (saith Paul) in man's renewing or will, But in God's mercy, who chooseth who he will.45 For both theological and artistic reasons, the author used only a few of the Genesis narratives about Jacob and Esau. The story of the extraordinary birth of the twins is not shown, though Rebekah and others refer to it and to the promise to Isaac. Similarly, Esau's marriages are just referred to in passing. Jacob's travels in Padan-aram, his dream at Bethel, his wrestling with the angel, his long "serving" for his bride, Rachel, and the subsequent history of his family, are not used at all. The play focuses on two encounters: the affair of the birthright and the affair of the blessing. The third dramatic encounter between the brothers (Gen. 32—33), which shows the fear and guilty pangs expressed by Jacob, his overtures to Esau, and Esau's generous forgiveness, was omitted, probably because it did not fit the characters as the author conceived them and because it diminished rather than increased his case for predestination. The whole first act is expository. It enlarges on the contrast between the brothers suggested by Genesis 25 : 27-28; "Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field ; and Jacob a plain man living in tents. And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison; but Rachel loved Jacob". The brothers are strategically 45

Farmer, p. 3. See Mal. 1 : 1-3, Eph. 1 : 4-5, Rom. 8 : 28-37, 9 : 13. These were classic proof-texts for predestination. See also Calvin's Institutio Christianae Religioni*, HI, XXX, 5-7.

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left behind the scenes until they have been discussed to the point where we are curious to see them. Esau's servant, Ragau, has no respect for his master, attributes his enthusiasm for hunting and early rising to "botts in his brain", and makes clear that he is greedy, vain, boorish, and stingy. Esau's first appearance shows that he is as loud-mouthed and overconfident a lout as Ragau hinted, sure that he is his father's favorite and heedless that his horn-blowing may disturb sleeping neighbors. Next Hanan and Zethar, two elderly gentlemen, who have been awakened by the racket, debate whether education or election is more powerful in forming character. Zethar thinks the faults in Esau arise from Isaac's lack of strictness; Hanan insists he has always been "like to prove ill", whereas Jacob has always loved and obeyed God. We are evidently meant to think well of Jacob. However, when he appears, his complaints to his mother that Esau calls him names, and his unctuous reliance on God's unsearchable judgments do not appeal to modern readers. The second act elaborates the birthright episode, wringing all possible humor out of it. Esau's greed has been well prepared for by a description of his enormous appetite in Act I. Now he and Ragau are both starving. Esau offers to eat, successively, a cat, a dog, his arm, and Ragau. Again Jacob's behavior, meant to be exemplary, strikes us unpleasantly. He rebukes Esau for his profitless pursuit of hunting and with Uriah-Heepish humility apologizes for the limitations of his hospitality. Alack, brother, I have in my little cottage Nothing but a mess of gross and homely pottage. 40

He is quick enough to strike the bargain, however, and Esau departs with the "pottage", selfishly locking the door against the still hungry Ragau, who revenges himself by mocking the disgusting speed with which his master gulps down his meal. He and Mido, Isaac's little servant, exchange comic stychomythia in which they amuse themselves over Esau's greed and stupidity; they mimic his sucking noises and his gobbling. Meanwhile Jacob 46

Farmer, p. 31.

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feels a little guilty, but blames his deceit on his mother's "enticement'" and prays that God will "turn it all to good". Rebekah assures him "thou art sure elected / And that unthrift Esau of God is rejected". Her busy mind is already plotting. Surely Isaac, being blind, may be "beguiled"? The third and fourth acts concern the complicated efforts of Rebekah and Jacob to secure the blessing. Esau, who does not seem at all moved about his father's imminent death - in fact neither son has much heart - goes with Ragau to hunt. Jacob is still a little anxious about the deceit his mother plans, but when she promises to assume all the guilt, he thanks fortune for such a good mother - as well he may, for she has to plan every detail, even to sending after him the shepherd's crook which he has forgotten in his haste. She makes him the "sleeves of kid", "glovelike ... for each finger a stall" and the "collar of rough kid's hair", and dresses him in Esau's clothes. He is ashamed "to wear another bird's feathers", but none the less goes through with the deception, acting his part well. Isaac delivers the blessing and Rebekah praises the mercy and wisdom of God. In the early scenes in Act V, the author makes good use of dramatic irony. Esau is in high spirits at the success of his hunting expedition. "Cock-on-hoop, all is ours", he rejoices, and boasts how he will kick everyone around when his father is dead, saying "I shall wring all louts and make them stoop". Isaac appears at this point. He knows already what has happened, for the author was not adroit enough to realize that the scene would be more effective if the two recognized the deception simultaneously. Isaac has to enlighten his son: Ah, Esau, Esau, thou comest too late! Another to thy blessing was predestinate. 47

Esau's disappointment is as violent as his hopes. He wishes the wild beasts had torn him to pieces, curses his brother who has taken both heritage and blessing, wishes he had kicked back at his brother at birth "to mar his mopish face", and plans to revenge 47

Farmer, p. 74. This is also noticed by Bevington, p. 30.

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himself on the whole household. Meanwhile Rebekah has arranged, exactly as in Genesis, to send Jacob off to find a wife among his own kin. Now the author has to bring his play to a close on a rather unconvincing note of reconciliation. At his mother's insistence, Esau agrees, rather grudgingly, to forgive his brother, and the family and household gather to sing a hymn and listen to a short sermon on predestination. In his preoccupation with predestination, the author does not seem to be aware how unpleasantly his two main characters may strike the reader whose theological assumptions are different. The characters of both brothers have been degraded. In Genesis, Esau, in spite of his faults, has a touch of tragic dignity when he cries "with a great and exeeding bitter cry", "Bless me, even me also, O my father", and his forgiveness of Jacob, after a long interval has passed, is warm and unforced. In the play, he is a greedy, noisy hooligan, a would-be tyrant without a shred of dignity. The Biblical Jacob is indeed a selfish opportunist, well served by luck, his mother, and his quick wit. In the play, though, he is supposed to be admired by the household and community as a model of piety and morality, he is in fact a thorough hypocrite, who knows quite well that his deceptions are wrong, but who smothers his conscience with unctuous piety. He is never (as in Genesis 32) harrowed by guilty fear; his humility seems a pretense and his scruples an affectation. A Joseph Surface who is supposed to be a beneficiary of predestination is too much. The parents, too, have lost some of their patriarchal dignity. Of course, Rebekah's scheming is part of the received legend, but her superficial piety make her almost as objectionable as her favorite son. Isaac retains a few shreds of dignity, appears to try to do his best for both his sons, and is given one of the important speeches on election. However, his blindness and helplessness are emphasized so much that the total effect is one of pitiable ineffectiveness. In general, the author displays a certain moral obtuseness in the development of his characters. An interesting feature of Jacob and Esau is the author's attempt at local color. There are frequent references to dwelling in tents and Esau and Ragau are clad in skins. The staff and sheep crook

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are clearly meant to be primitive Hebrew types. The coins in use in the community are the Biblical shekel and talent. Rebekah's directions to the maid Abra to scrub the vessels well may have been intended to suggest a ritual cleansing. The author would not be aware of any anachronism here, nor in the use of the New Testament phrase "kiss of peace". He has taken care to avoid such obvious anachronisms as "by Mahound", "by Jesu", or "in the name of the Trinity", which are so familiar to readers of the mystery cycles; prayers are addressed to the God of Abraham. The author took particular pains with the Hebrew names he provided for his minor characters. Deborah, the nurse, is not the warrior of Judges 4 and 5, but Rebekah's old nurse, as stated in Genesis 35 : 8. A Ragau 4 8 is mentioned in Luke 3 : 35. Raca, "fool" in Matthew 5 : 22, may be a corruption of this. Ragau certainly plays the fool on occasions. The two old men who comment on the contrast between the two brothers and debate the issues of grace and election are also given names from the Old Testament. Hanan, who claims that man can achieve righteousness only by "special grace", is named after the Benjamite of I Chronicles, 8 : 23 ; his name appropriately means "gracious". Our more familiar John is a variant of the same root. The name for Zethar, Hanan's companion, is borrowed from one of Ahazuerus' chamberlains (Esther 1 : 10). It is hardly necessary to add that this effort at authenticity is not consistently maintained. Quite apart from the author's rigid Calvinism, which pervades the whole play and affects his treatment of characters and theme, some very unpatriarchal details have crept in. Esau's stew has a rather English flavor, spiced as it is with rosemary, marigold, and pennyroyal; and his dogs, Takepart, Swan, and Lightfoot certainly sniffed the English soil. On the whole, however, Jacob and Esau witnesses to an interesting and original attempt to authenticate a famous story by supplying historical local color. 49 48

Farmer's text gives this consistently as Ragan, but a glance at bis own facsimile edition would have shown him that the spelling was Ragau. 40 Bevington noted that in this play "indication of doubling is specifically omitted and seems to have been foreign to the design of the work". The

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CONCLUSION

The Biblical drama of this period represents a less impressive achievement than the work of University humanists and, in some respects, than the dramatic work of Bale. The present authors are inferior both to the humanists and to Bale in the fervor of their religious convictions. Only Marie Magdalene and Abraham's Sacrifice seem deeply religious; Jacob and Esau, intended as a theological proof-text in action, is in effect a theological and moral travesty. The most prominent feature of the plays is their moral earnestness. Truth, modesty, justice, and mercy are extolled and vanity, corruption, social climbing, wantonness, usury, and the exploitation of the poor are condemned. Among the English plays, Jacob and Esau achieves the greatest technical success. Readers who are repelled by the hypocrisy and false piety of Jacob and Rebekah may still admire the neat handling of the intrigue and the excellent use of suspense. The writer had studied Roman comedy quite as carefully as the authors of Ralph Roister Deister or Gammer Gurton's Needle. Technically it was but a few steps from these plays to a successful farce such as The Comedy of Errors. Susanna, although dominated by the morality tradition, also looks forward, anticipating the romantic tragicomedies of the great Elizabethans in its treatment of the heroine and in a plot pattern in which she is happily extricated from a desperate situation.

whole cast was called to appear at the end. This seems to be a further indication that Jacob and Esau was intended for schoolboy players. The poet is also present for the curtain call.

VI BIBLICAL DRAMA BY SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES

I.

INTRODUCTION

For almost two decades - from the publication of Garter's Susanna (1568/9) to the publication of the lost Job (1587) and the Looking Glass for London of Greene and Hodge - we have no records of any native Biblical plays. How is this gap to be accounted for? Before trying to answer this question, it may be relevant to consider what was happening to the mystery plays during approximately the same period. 1 At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign nearly a dozen of the cycles were still functioning, though of course not all were played every year. At York, Wakefield, Chester, Coventry, Norwich, Newcastle, Doncaster, Durham, Tewkesbury, New Romney, Chelmsford, and perhaps in other towns of which we have no records, Corpus Christi plays continued to be performed, though often, in defence to some segments of Protestant opinion, on another day. (The Festival of Corpus Christi had, in fact, been suppressed in 1548). There were also isolated religious plays, for example at Kingston, Surrey; Morebath, Devon; and Braintree, Essex. Essex indeed seems to have been the scene of much activity, for local communities such as Little Badow, Colchester, Lanshire, Stapleford, High Easter, Hanningfield, and Witham rented cos· 1

For these facts and dates see Chambers, Medieval Stage, Vol. Π, Appendix W, Gardiner, pp. 66-86, Craig, pp. 354-365, and (often overlooked), W. P. Mepham's articles in the Essex Review, LV (1946) pp. 57-65, 121-136, LVI (1947) pp. 148-152, 171-178; LVD (1948), pp. 205-216.

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tumes from Chelmsford and performed their own plays until about 1572. Yet by about 1580 the traditional drama had suffered a marked decline. Between 1560 and 1580, no less than ten important centers dropped their plays. Newcastle (c. 1561/2), Norwich (c. 1564/5), Durham (1567), New Romney (1568), York (c. 1569), Chelmsford (probably in 1574 when they sold their costumes), Chester (1575),Doncaster (1576), Wakefield (c. 1576), and Coventry (c. 1579/80). The Lincoln cycle, revived under Mary, had already disappeared. Along with these went the Easter plays at Kingston and Morebath, the Creed and Pater Noster plays at York, and the Shewsbury Passion mentioned in Chapter V. Such a high mortality rate seems to call for explanation as much as the dearth of new Biblical drama. Undoubtedly the progress of the Reformation was a major force in the decline of the plays. Glynne Wickham reminds us that every performance of a mystery "was a living representation of Catholic dogma" which could not fail "to concern a government occupied with the political consequences of the breach with Rome". 2 He thinks the plays were deliberately suppressed through the gradual introduction of State censorship, exerted in the north of England by the Court of High Commission for the North, working in the main through the church. An examination of the known cases will to a large extent bear this out. It is worth noting that in a number of places attempts were made to revise the plays before they were dropped, usually to make them more acceptable to Protestant orthodoxy. A passage on the Seven Sacraments in the Wakefield cycle was cut out, as were the plays about the Virgin at York and Chester. At Chester, too, a new preface was written which observes that the old plays were written in "the tyme of ignorance in which we did straye" and that they did not always follow the Bible exactly, notably in the introduction of midwives at the Nativity. The last play but one, the preface says, is to show the triumph of Antichrist - i.e. 2

Early English Stages, Vol. 1, p. 116, Vol. II, p. 15. In the account that follows I use his Vol. I, Ch. IV and Vol. Π, Ch. II; also Chambers, Appendix W, and Craig, Ch. 10.

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157

no doubt the Roman Catholics. Explanatory stanzas were also prefaced to a 1565 version of the Old Norwich Grocers' Paradise play, claiming that it was "newly renuid accordynge to the scripture". The doctrinal passages were given a strong Calvinistic flavor and two morality figures, Dolor and Misery, were added. In spite of these additions, the Norwich cycle was dropped about 1565 and its pageant sold for scrap. At Lincoln and at Coventry attempts seem to have been made to find new plays which would be vaguely religious but theologically innocuous. At Lincoln Tobias, based on a story from the Apocrypha, was played in 1564 and again in 1567. At Coventry in 1584, about four years after the cycle plays had been discontinued (in Craig's view because of Protestant discontent with them) a new play, The Destruction of Jerusalem was commissioned. Written by an Oxford man, John Smythe, it was apparently played only twice. Neither of these quasi-religious projects really caught on with the populace. The changes just described seem to have been made on the initiative of the local authorities. In the diocese of York, on the other hand, there is certainly evidence of censorship by the church, whether directed by the High Commission for the North or not. The cathedral clergy clearly exerted pressure on municipal leaders to modify their texts and even to give up the plays. In the three cases we know about, either Matthew Hutton, the Dean, or Edmund Grindal, the Archbishop, was involved. Both men were Puritans, Grindal in particular being known for his antipathy to plays and playgoers; when he was Bishop of London he tried to get the commercial theatres closed. In 1568 the Creed play fell into the hands of Dean Hutton, who wrote a tactful letter, admiring the "antiquities" of the old play, deprecating the difference "from the sinceritie of the gospell", and regretting that he had not "skill and leisure to amend it". He thinks it would be better if they did not play it "in the happie time of the gospell", for, he says, "I know the learned will mislike it and how the State will beare it, I know not". The Council apparently took his advice, for we hear no more of the Creed play. Something similar apparently happened to the Pater Noster play, for though

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it was revised, it was dropped after being played in 1572. The Corpus Christi plays were played in 1569, but the political climate after the rebellion of the Northern Lords in that year and the excommunication of the Queen in 1570 evidently militated against further performances. The Council wanted to perform them in 1575 and again in 1579, but evidently the ecclesiastical authorities quietly held on to the manuscript. Archbishop Grindal figures in an unpleasantness at Chester, when in 1571, the Mayor, John Hankey, got into trouble for permitting the cycle plays to be performed in defiance of Grindal, whose "inhibition" he claimed came too late. He was called before the Privy Council. In 1574 another Mayor, Sir John Savage, also defied Grindal by countenancing the plays and was in his turn summoned before the Privy Council. Though a letter written in his defence shows that the townspeople believed that the plays were very profitable to their city, the cycle was not played after 1575, though there was a Shepherd's play in 1579 - perhaps it is significant that by then Grindal had been translated to Canterbury. But on the whole it would seem that episcopal pressure, backed up by the Privy Council, put an end to the cycle. The strongest piece of evidence for episcopal suppression is a document of 1576 relating to the Corpus Christi plays at Wakefield. Here Dean Hutton was again involved, together with two other members of the Diocesan Commission. Their injunctions are quite specific. No pageants are to be played "wherein the Majestie of God the Father, God the Sonne, or God the Holie Ghoste or the administration of either the Sacramentes ... be counterfeyted or represented or anything plaied which tend to the maintenance of supersition and idolatrie or which be contrarie to the lawes of God and [cancelled] or of the realm". As Wickham says, "The cycle is censored out of existence". 3 Medieval plays did survive in places distant from the center of authority. Tewkesbury gave a New Testament play in 1585, and there were Cornish mysteries in the seventeenth century. Weaver in his Funeral Monuments speaks of seeing Corpus Christi 8

Vol. I, p. 115

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159

plays in Preston, Lancaster, and Kendall at the beginning of James I's reign, though he concludes his account by saying that "They were finally supprest, not only there, but in all other townes of the kingdome".4 If there really was a Privy Council policy to suppress all the mysteries, it took some time before it was carried out; still, it is hard to escape the impression that Protestant pressure, exerted through the diocesan authorities, was a major factor in the decline of the mysteries. Do these circumstances throw any light on the virtual cessation in the writing of Protestant Biblical drama for the late 1560's to the late 1580's? I think they may. The climate of opinion does not seem to have been conducive to religious writing and authors may have feared repercussions if they "meddled with" the scriptures and with topics where doctrinal deviation might be dangerous. Wickham has shown how considerably censorship of the theater increased during this period, how the Court, the City fathers and the Church vied with each other for control of the stage, how power to licence was put into the hands of the Master of Revels in 1574 and how the latter's hands were strengthened by a new Patent in 1581. 5 Faced with such an increase in censorship, the would-be writer of Biblical plays may well have turned to other, safer subject matter. The other factor, of course, is the increased power and aggressiveness of the Puritan party, who regarded the stage with something of the horror that early Christians felt for the arena. Puritan spokesmen were more and more openly critical of worldliness and frivolity and increasingly regarded worldly pleasures such as playgoing as signs of spiritual corruption. City fathers joined with tract-writers like Gosson, Munday, Fenton, and Northbrooke to hurl abuse on dramatists, actors, and playgoers. Again potential writers of Biblical plays may have been discouraged from making the attempt. Why, then, was there a renewal of interest in Biblical drama in the late 80's? Probably by that time the lines between the enemies of the theatre and the theatre itself had hardened to a 4 5

Chambers, pp. 373, 391 Vol. Π, Ch. 3.

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point where there was little point in considering Puritan tastes. Moreover, we shall find that the Biblical plays which have survived did not "meddle with" doctrine and generally stuck to Old Testament subjects as being safer. The exceptions to this are the lost Pontius Pilate by Dekker - did he treat it as a tragedy of decision? - and the Prodigal Son; parables, it will be remembered, were regarded as fiction and so could be safely dramatized. A third factor in the revival of Biblical plays was probably the desperate need of playwrights for good dramatic materais, which the Bible plentifully supplied. A glance at the chart will show that we know of fourteen plays between about 1587 and about 1602, plus the two plays of the English comedians, whose date of composition is not known. It is possible, but by no means certain, that the comedians' Queen Hester may be the Esther and Ahasuerus of which Henslowe records two performances in 1594. Many of the other plays were also associated with his company. Of these sixteen plays, only four survive: A Looking Glass for London and England and King David and Fair Bethsaba from the London theatre and Queen Hester and Proud Haman and The Comedy of the Prodigal Son from the English comedians. These two plays are known to us only through German versions first published in 1620, but since the company was active from 1585 on and since their plays were generally of English origin, they may reasonably be treated in this chapter. Date

Title

Author

Auspices

1587

Job (lost)

Robert Greene?

Unknown

ca. 1588-92 Looking Glass

Robert Greene Queen's and Thomas Lodge

ca. 1592-4

David and Bethsaba George Peele

1593-4

Abraham and Lot (lost)

Unknown

Sussex's at the Rose

1594

Esther and Ahasuerus

Unknown

Admiral's or Chamberlain's at Newington Butts

Unknown

BIBLICAL DRAMA BY SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES Author

161

Auspices

Date

Title

1596

Nebuchadnezzar (lost)

1601-2

Pontius Pilate (lost) Unknown, Dekker

1601

Judas (lost)

Begun by William Houghton; continued by Rowley, Bird

1602

Jephthah

Thomas Dekker and Admiral's Anthony Munday

1602

Tobias (lost)

Henry Chettle

Admiral's

1602

Joshua (lost)

Samuel Rowley

Admiral's at the Fortune

1602

Samson (lost)

Rowley and Edward Admiral's Jewby? Unknown?

1602

Absalom (lost) (same as below?)

ca. 1600-2

Three (or Two?) Brothers (same as above?) (lost)

Wentworth Smith

Worcester's

Before 1620

Queen Esther and Proud H aman

Unknown

English Comedians in Germany

Before 1620

Comedy of the Prodigal Son

Unknown

English Comedians in Germany

2.

A LOOKING

(lost)

GLASS

Admiral's possibly Pembroke's Admiral's at the Rose

Worcester's

FOR LONDON

AND

ENGLAND

One of the strangest Biblical plays of the last years of the century is A Looking Glass for London and England, 6 the joint work of Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, first mentioned in Henslowe's β

I have used the text in The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene, ed. J. Churton Collins (Oxford, 1905), I, 154-214; cited as Collins.

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Diary in March 1591/2, but possibly written earlier. The basic Biblical source is the book of Jonah, and this book provides the central narrative of the play; but the authors evidently felt that one prophet was not enough, so in the second scene an angel brings in "Oseas the Prophet" (i.e. Hosea), who is "let down over the stage in a throne", who broods over the sinful scenes the poets set before him and comments on them from time to time. Jonah does not appear until Act III and some changes have been made in the Biblical account. Presumably to comply with objections to God appearing on the stage, all His speeches are delivered by an angel. The satire is directed, not, as in the original, against the narrowness of Jonah himself, but against the sins of the Ninevites. In the play the prophet sees the light, as he does not in the Bible. When the angel tells him to look favorably on Nineveh, on the "true contrition of their King, and on the subjects' tears, the sinners' true remorse", Jonah's sulks are instantly banished and he goes to comfort Nineveh with "glad tydings of recovered grace". The most important change is in the content of Jonah's preaching. Whereas the Bible merely says that he "cried and said, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown", in the play he has been provided with a full gamut of prophetic denunciation which Collins is inclined to ascribe to Lodge. He inveighs against usury, covetousness, drunkenness, murder, chambering and wantonness, and the neglect of widows and orphans. He further accuses Nineveh of rebelling against God and of turning a deaf ear to His prophet. Repent ye, men of Ninivie, repenti The day of horror and of torment comes, When greedie hearts shall glutted be with fire, When as corruption vailde shall be unmaskt, When briberies shall be repaide with bane, When whoredomes shall be recompenc'd in hell, When riot shall with rigor be rewarded, When as neglect of truth, contempt of God, Disdaine of poore men, fatherless and sicke, Shall be rewarded with a bitter plague.

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Repent, ye men of Ninivie, repenti The Lord hath spoke, and I do crie it out, There are as yet but fortie daies remaining, And then shall Ninivie be over throwne.

He foretells the coming destruction of the city in terms which recall prophetic warnings of the "great and terrible day of the Lord". 7 In this last passage Jonah does turn to speak to the people of the sixteenth century: Ye happy lies where Prophets do abound, Ye Cities famous in the westerne world, Make Ninivie a president for you. Leave leaud desires, leave covetous delights, Flie usurie, let whoredome be exilde, Least you with Ninivie be ouerthrowne. 8

And again in the epilogue he calls upon London, sunk in "delitious pleasures" and "swolne ... with impudence and pride" to listen to God's preachers, who daily in London and England "cry weeping to the Lord". 9 To drive home their point that corruption is universal and that all men need to repent and amend their ways, Lodge and Greene worked out the three subplots 10 which expose the various sins of the commonwealth against which the prophets' warnings are directed. They place the story of Jonah (which is not dated in any way in the Bible) in a vaguely historical context borrowed from Josephus who mentions a King Rasni or Rasin of Nineveh.11 This Rasni is represented in the play as a very imperfect prince whose court is dissolute and who exercises no proper control over any of his subjects. Because of his inadequacies as a ruler, all classes in his kingdom fall into sin. Lodge and Greene are at pains to point out that corruption in society is not characteristic of any 7 E. G. Amos 5 : 18-20; Isa. 10 : 3; Joel 2 : 1 1 ; Zeph. 1 : 14; compare Acts 2 : 20 and Jesus' forecast of the destruction of Jerusalem in Mark 13. 8 Collins, p. 207. 9 Ibid., p. 214. 10 This is the same technique used a generation earlier by the authors of King Darius, and The Cruel Debtor. 11 N. Burton Paradise, Thomas Lodge (New Haven, 1931), p. 154.

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one group, but may seep down from the highest ranks to the lowest. The court scenes picture a dissolute aristocracy, sunk in luxury, vanity, and sexual immorality. Courtiers, parasites, and other servants attend on the royal personages. Eunuchs play sweet music and hang the apartments with garlands of flowers. Cosmetics for Remilia, the king's sister, are fetched at fabulous prices from all over the world to make up in her face "what nature mist". These aids to beauty are so effective that the princess boasts that her hair curls more beautifully than Apollo's, that her eyes shine like stars, and that she surpasses Venus in beauty. The morals of the court have sunk to perverted level. Rasni is guilty of incestuous love for his sister and later of adultery with Alvida, the wife of the King of Paphlagonia. Alvida herself, at first responsive to Rasni's advances, poisons her husband but later secretly transfers her affections to another royal guest, the King of Cilicia. Rasni himself is not only an immoral individual but an irresponsible ruler. Absorbed in his love-making, he is indifferent when one erf his subjects has been killed in a drunken brawl, when a poor woman appeals to him to stop usury and deceit, and when his favorite, Radagon, refuses charity to his starving family. He takes no action to improve the moral welfare of his people. He also fails to heed the divinely appointed accidents and portents which are intended to warn him to forsake his wicked ways. These accidents are (like the mysterious cautions and startling collapse of the Brazen Head in Friar Bacon) spectacular in the extreme. Remilia's vanity and her incestuous love are punished by catastrophic destruction. When she goes into the "brave arbour" made for her by Rasni's magicians, she is "strooken" by lightning and revealed as a black and hideous body beyond the aid of the herbs and oil sent for by the king. Radagon, an upstart courtier, similarly meets with sudden death. When, encouraged by the king, he cruelly spurns his family, a flame of fire envelops and devours him. The mutual sin of Alvida and Rasni brings out the "Priests of the sunne, with the miters on their heads, carrying fire in their hands". They protest that monstrous evil is afoot, for they see their altars streaming with blood and "the ghosts of dead men

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howling" and crying "Vae, Vae, wo to this Citie, wo!" At this moment a burning sword appears in the sky. Rasni, evidently a man of iron nerve, is unmoved by all these manifestations. After Remilia's death, he consoles himself with the thought that there are other lovely women, while after the burning of Radagon he is soothed by his magicians, who offer him the "scientific" explanation that Radagon has been swallowed up by a volcano. The magicians put aside the horrifying portents described by the priest as mere "clammy exhalations" of no interest to Rasni but possibly betokening danger to his foes. All these events demonstrate that the king, through his own inattention and through listening to evil counselors, fails to discern the supernatural protests against his evildoing. Presumably in the Rasni scenes, the authors were attacking decadent aristocracies and evil princes in general, not Elizabeth and her court. The episodes relating the activities of the Judge, the Lawyer, and the Usurer contain more direct topical satire. The victims of sharp practice are Thrasibulus, a poverty-stricken gentleman, and Alcon, a poor man whose younger son cried for bread while his older son, Radagon the upstart, enjoys himself at court. Thrasibulus is thriftless and Alcon improvident, but neither is vicious until driven by poverty to crime. Thrasibulus, the victim of a commodity swindle, has been forced to take a loan of £ 40 in the form of £ 10 cash and £ 30 worth of lute strings.12 He asks for more time to pay, but the usurer slyly engages him in talk until the hour for payment strikes, and then lays claim to the farm. Alcon has given his cow in pledge for the loan of 30/-, but the usurer insists he has come too late and keeps the cow. Alcon and Thrasibulus join forces to engage a lawyer, Alcon pawning his wife's best gown to pay the fee. However, when the case comes to court, all goes against them. The Lawyer, who has forgotten all the facts, bids them tell their stories themselves, then cries, "Faith, sir, the case is altered, you told me it before in another manner", and the Judge pronounces for the defendant. It is clear that Usurer, Lawyer, and Judge are in league together, 12

This same incident was used in Lodge's pamphlet, Alarum Usurers (1584). See Collins, p. 140, for quotation and comment.

against

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and, hopeless of redress from the law, the two victims are driven to other expedients to keep themselves from starving. Alcon undergoes the humiliation of begging (unsuccessfully) from Radagon, his courtier son, and when that fails the two turn to petty pilfering and actually are forced to deal with their enemy, the Usurer, who turns out to be a receiver of stolen goods. The third group of scenes exposes the unrepentant depravity of the lowest classes. The smith's servant, Adam the clown (whose pseudo-learned fooling reminds us of Miles in Friar Bacon), spends his time with ruffians who drink deep, call for prostitutes, quarrel, and finally do murder. The clown makes love to the smith's wife and, when the husband catches them together, delivers a mock homily on jealousy and beats his master until he cries for help. All these episodes demonstrate how one crime leads to another and how in a corrupt commonwealth the whole hierarchy of social relationships may be upset. The picture here of the servant beating his master is a parallel to the ungrateful Radagon's rejection of his parents in the previous scene. Sin and crime have brought about moral and social chaos. The Jonah story and the scenes of contemporary satire are united by the theme which underlies them all: the wicked must repent and amend their lives if they are to be saved. London as well as Nineveh must recognize her sins and "turn and live". The prophets are the agents of this reformation. In the play, Jonah speaks chiefly to the Ninevites, while "Oseas" addresses the Londoners. "London, looke on", he cries, "take heed", "looke about / Tis not enough in show to be devout". After every revelation of folly, corruption, or dishonesty, he has a long speech of comment and exhortation, for example, When disobedience raigneth in the childe And Princes eares by flattery be beguilde When lawes do passe by favour, not by truth; When falshood swarmeth both in old and youth; And charity exilde from rich mens doore ... When great mens eares are stopt to good advice, And apt to heare those tales that feed their vice, Woe to the land! 13 18

Collins, p. 181-2.

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Like a dismal chorus, he reminds the Londoners over and again that all their evil deeds are visible to God: O London, this and more doth swarme in thee Repent, repent, for why the Lord doth see. 1 4

When he is recalled from Nineveh by the angel, he delivers a last warning: Looke, London, look; with inward eies behold What lessons the events do here unfold. Sinne growne to pride to misery is thrall; The warning bell is rung, beware to fall. Y e worldly men, whom wealth doth lift on hie, Beware and feare, for worldly men must die. The time shall come, where least suspect remaines, The sword shall light upon the wisest braines. The head that deemes to over-top the skie, Shall perish in his humaine pollicie. Lo, I have said, when I have said the truth, When will is law, when folly guideth youth, When shew of zeale is prankt in robes of zeale, When Ministers powle the pride of common-weale, When law is made a laborinth of strife, When honour yeelds him friend to wicked life, When Princes heare by others eares their follie, When usury is most accounted holie, If these shall hap, as would to God they might not, The plague is neare. 1 6

The substance of the prophetic speeches is not only closely related to the action, but also the prophetic books of the Old Testament. "Mark but the Prophets" says the gloomy "Oseas" at one point, and it is evident that Lodge himself (if, as Collins supposes, he is responsible for these speeches) has marked them well. "Oseas" is a composite figure. His speeches contain condemnations which echo not only the book of Hosea but also Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Nahum, and others; even John the Baptist and St. Paul. The only surprising thing is that Lodge chose the name of Hosea, the gentlest and most merciful of all the prophets, for his grim and threatening commentator. 14

18

Ibid., p. 182.

Ibid., p. 197-198.

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For in actual fact very little is drawn from the book of Hosea, except perhaps for the general condemnation of immorality, the objections to drunkenness, and false swearing and the threat of final destruction.16 These points are found in other prophetic books, notably in Isaiah 17 who also condemns those who grind the faces of the poor, and deprive them of their property. 18 Isaiah draws a vivid picture of the wealthy, haughty women who "walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes", walking and mincing as they go and showing off their clothes and ornaments; compare Lodge's "Flie wantons, flie this pride and vaine attire". 19 Isaiah's apostrophe "Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers", 20 neatly summarizes the "Looking Glass" picture of Nineveh and London. From Ezekiel, Lodge may have carried away a vivid picture of the prophet as a watchman, high above the city and looking down on its corruption. Found in Ezekiel also is the idea that the shepherd is responsible for his flock; compare "Woe to the flocks whereas the shepheards foule", 2 1 though this is a very common medieval and Renaissance figure. A few details of the picture of the fall of Nineveh may have been drawn from Nahum's account of the actual fall of the city in 612 B.C. 2 2 In the middle of Act III, "Oseas" prophesies that from the East shall rise A lambe of peace, the scourge of vanities; The judge of truth, the patron of the just, Who soone will laie presumption in the dust, And give the humble poore their hearts desire, And doome the worldlings to eternali f i r e . 2 3

This has touches of the messianic prophesies in Isaiah, of New 16

Hosea 4 : 1-2, 11; 7 : 5, 11; 8 : 7-8; 10 : 4. Isaiah 1 : 4-20; 3 : 8; 17 : 12; 28 : 1-3, 7; 30 : 9. 18 Isaiah 3 : 15; 5 : 8. 19 Isaiah 3 : 16-17. Collins, p. 162. 20 Isaiah 1 : 4. 21 Iszekiel 34 : 1-10; compare John 10 : 11; 21 : 16; compare Collins, p. 175. 22 Nahum, passim, esp. 2 : 6; compare Collins, p. 202. 23 Collins, p. 182. 17

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Testament allusions to Christ as the Lamb of God, and of the Magnificat. 2 4 "The axe already to the tree is set" is from John the Baptist 2 5 and "chambering and wantonness" and Christ as the cornerstone comes from St. Paul. 2 6 But the prophet who is echoed, quoted, and drawn upon for subject matter most frequently is Amos, whom Lodge (if it was Lodge) seems to have studied very closely. Amos condemns those who sell "the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes", who "oppress the poor and crush the needy"; who "turn justice to wormwood", take bribes, and "turn aside the poor in the gate" (i.e. refuse justice); who use false balances and make "the ephah small and the shekel great". Similarly Lodge, through "Oseas", condemns the usurers and other "merciless men" who "rob the poor", while "the needie are thrust out of door"; condemns bribery, bids the Lawyer and Judge to "flie corruption", and laments that "gold is made a God to rob the poor". And as Amos denounces the "kine of Bashan", the well-fed women of Samaria who are absorbed in luxury and vanity, their ivory beds, spiced ointments, music, and wine, and are not heartsick over the ruin of Israel, so the play denounces Remilia and Alvida, pampered, wanton, conceited creatures, careless of the nation's corruption. 2 7 Both the prophets are impressive. Though they lack the poetical intensity and vivid imagery which characterize the great canonical prophets, in content, purpose, and tone they are not unworthy of their Old Testament originals. They make stern moral judgments. They attack specific sins and address their criticisms directly to the sinners. They speak of a righteous God and threaten disobedient men with severe punishments such as the plague or war. They address both sinful individuals and a sinful society. This lasf point is particularly significant. The eighth and seventh century prophets have often been admired for their insight into the 24

Isaiah 1 1 : 6 ; John 1 : 29; I Peter 1 : 19; Rev. 21 : 22. Luke 1 : 51-53. Mt. 3 : 10; Lk. 3 : 9. Roms. 13 : 13; Ephesians 2 : 20; Collins, pp. 202, 182. 27 Amos 2 : 6; 5 : 7; 5 : 12; 8 : 5; 4 : 1; 6 : 1 f; compare, for example, Collins pp. 156, 175, 181. 25 26

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corporate nature of sin. Greene and Lodge deserve credit for constructing a plot which, however naïve theatrically, made the same point in terms their generation could understand. Incidentally, on a few points their prophetic commentators have been brought up to date. "Oseas" anticipates, as the canonical prophets did not, a life to come in which eternal punishment or eternal happiness is possible. Jonah not only uses New Testament phraseology ("Go bring glad tydings of recovered grace"), but has an echo or two of earlier Biblical dramatists. Reminding the Londoners that only the prayers of the Virgin Queen have averted "the plague which otherwise would fall", he finishes: Repent, O London, least for thine offence Thy shepheard faile, whom mightie God preserve That she may bide the pillar of his Church Against the stormes of Romish Antichrist. 28

How far were Jonah and "Oseas" successful? In the play, the former's exertions are rewarded with an impressive series of repentances. Rasni and his court mourn in sackcloth and ashes, and a national fast is proclaimed. The usurer is so appalled at the "bleeding ghosts" of those he has cheated that "groning in conscience" and tempted by an evil angel, he nearly hangs himself, but recollecting God's mercy, turns to prayer instead. 2 9 In the last scene several, though not all, of the characters express their "hartie penitence" and thankfulness for God's mercy. Rasni makes plans to reform the whole kingdom with the help of the preacher. Come, holie man, as thou shalt counsaile me My Court and Citie shall reformed be. 3 0 28

Collins, p. 214. R. A. Law, "A Looking Glass and the Scriptures", Studies in English, University of Texas Studies (July, 1939), Austin, Texas, p. 41, points out that the story of Zaccheus the repentant publican (Luke 19 : 2) furnished some phrases for the Usurer's repentance soliloquy. The passage You mountains, shroude me from the God of truth: Mee-thinkes I see him sit to judge the earth; See how he blots me out of the booke of life! resembles the well-known lines in Faustus. Both Marlowe and Lodge, Law thinks, probably derived it from Rev. 3 : 5; 6 : 15-16. 30 Collins, p. 214. 29

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How did the Londoners take to their "Looking Glass"? Did they "turn with weeping to the Lord?" It is clear at least that they saw and bought the play. Henslowe's revival in 1591/2 drew large crowds, was selected for the Easter production, and made the gratifying sum of fifty-five shillings.31 Puppet plays on Jonah, popular well into the seventeenth century, may have derived from the present play, as is almost certainly the case with "ein comedia auss dem propheten Jona" performed at Nordlingen in 1605. Five editions 3 2 testify to the popularity of A Looking Glass with the buyers of plays. No other English Biblical play was so often reprinted. Lodge and Greene certainly found a public for their sermon in dramatic form.

3. DAVID AND

BETHSABA

To modern readers possibly the best known of all the Biblical plays in the century is George Peele's David and Bethsaba, 33 written in the early 1590's.34 Despite some textual peculiarities,35 Peele's play reads easily, has some literary merit, and deserves careful study as one of the many experiments of the most versatile of the University Wits. The full title of the play, The Love of King David and Fair Bethsaba With the Tragedie of Absalon, 3 6 suggests two major 31

See Paradise, p. 152-3. 1594, 1598, 1602, 1617 and a fifth undated one. See Collins, pp. 141-2. 33 It was entered in the Stationers' Register in 1594 and printed by Adam Islip in 1599. There is a Malone Society reprint of this edition, ed. W. W. Greg (Oxford, 1912). I have used the text in J. M. Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, II, 419-86; cited as Manly. 34 David H. Home, The Life and Minor Works of George Peele (New Haven, 1952), pp. 92r-3, dates it 1592-4. 35 The Choruses divide the play into three unequal parts, Act Π being longer than the other two put together. As the second chorus is marked "Chorus 5", it looks as if at some point a five act plot was contemplated. There is no concluding chorus or epilogue, and some scenes appear to be missing from the middle of "Act Π". An isolated fragment of speech by Absalom occurs after he has been killed, and there are other signs of hasty composition or revision. 38 Peele's spellings vary somewhat, notably "Bethsabe" and "Bersaba", 32

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foci of interest, and a third topic, the rise to favor of Solomon, is taken up in the last act. These events are related, of course, but are diverse in tone and cover something like thirty-five years. 37 Peele telescoped them somewhat and endeavored to give an effect of continuity and unity. Peele's source, II Samuel 10-19 and I Kings 1-2, records David's exploits from the war with Hanun, King of Ammon, some time after he had established himself in Jerusalem, down to his appointment of Solomon as his successor in his old age. Peele cut out a great many of the persons and events mentioned, omitting, for example, Jonathan's son, Mephibosheth, and his servant, Ziba, and cutting down David's many heathen enemies to two, Hanun of Ammon and Maacah, king of Gath. Peele also combines Hushai the Archite with the anonymous Cushite and, perhaps following a hint in the Septuagint, 3 8 presents him as "Cusay", a close friend and trustworthy servant who fetches Bathsheba, brings David the news of his baby son's death, and is sent on various messages and missions. Peele also rearranged the events, particularly early in the play, an attempt at greater continuity than he found in the narrative. In II Samuel, as in other historical books of the Old Testament, there is a tendency for the material to be set out in fairly well marked blocks, the earliest accounts, in the form of tales about David, alternating with later narratives, not always consistent or accurately connected with the earlier layers. These inconsistencies probably made Peele feel free to make alterations at will. What he found in Chapters 10-14 were three groups of materials concerning (1) David's wars, (2) the love of David for Bathsheba, (3) The Tamar-Ammon-Absalom feud. Usually the writer liked to finish

but usually approximate the Vulgate. I have used the AV forms except when indicated. 37 Home (p. 93) must have miscalculated when he writes that the action "which in the play less than a year is spread over 55 years in the Bible". Both parts of the statement are incorrect, for the play allows time for Solomon to grow up and David's whole reign (ca. 1004-962) occupied only about 40 years. 38 LXX inserts "David's friend" in 15 : 32.

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off each "tale" before he started another. What Peele did was to split these blocks of material into seven short, cinematic scenes in which his camera, so to speak, moves freely between Jerusalem, the battlefields, and the hills where the sheepshearing is going on. He treats the events (which actually covered about nine years) as if they were going on simultaneously. Thus the siege of Rabbah is assumed to be going on all the time, for David does not take the city until after the sheepshearing. Because of this rearrangement Peele is able to show him, ironically, in triumph, just before he is devastated by the death of his son. The incidents in the Bathsheba story, Chapters 11-12, are similarly dispersed. The scene when David spies Bathsheba bathing and sends for her opens the play. Then we see Uriah with the other warriors pressing the siege of Rabbah, so that we contrast his bravery with David's life of luxury. "Cusay", here as elsewhere David's messenger, recalls him, but we do not see him and the king together until after the rape of Tamar, when David tries to persuade him to go back to Bathsheba. Finally in desperation he feasts him and plies him with wine; but though he gets very drunk, Uriah never abandons his principle of refusing to enjoy himself while his companions-in-arms are at war. His death is described by the chorus, and Bathsheba is seen mourning him and regretting her unchastity. The scene showing Nathan's rebuke of David and the death of the baby are practically verse paraphrases of Chapter 12 : 1-25. The Tamar-Amnon-Absalom intrigue has been cut in half and compressed in time, for Absalom issues his invitation to the sheepshearing directly after the rape is made known. When, after David has been rebuked and has gone forth to besiege Rabbah, the sheepshearing does take place, it has somehow become Amnon's, not Absalom's. (It is hard to see why Peele made this change, unless it was to make the murder seem worse because it was directed against the host; in any case, Peele should have tidied up the obscurities here). Absalom himself, not his servant, commits the murder. The second part of the play recounts Absalom's revolt. Again time has been telescoped, for no two years pass as in 14 : 28, and

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the soliloquy in which Absalom plans to assume the office of judge follows without pause on his "reconciliation" with his father. Apart from this, Peele followed closely the dramatic and rapidly shifting events described in Chapters 15-18. David gathers his followers, including the loyal mercenary Ittai the Gittite, is stoned by the unpleasant Shimei, and sends "Cusay" to defeat the council of the treacherous Achitophel, who commits suicide when he sees he has lost his ascendancy over Absalom. For some reason, possibly to heighten Absalom's villainy, the rebel's insult to his father in taking over his concubines is made to appear his own idea, not Achitophel's. Incidentally, the concubines are made to protest against Absalom's action here. At this point, Peele has left out several incidents which were unnecessary or perhaps difficult to represent - the ingratitude of Mephiboseth, the kindness of the aged Barzillai, and the narrow escape of David's liaison officers. For the closing scenes of his play, Peele has selected only a few incidents from the wealth of material in II Samuel 18-24 and I Kings 1-2. The rival messengers set off with the news of Absalom's death, the king laments and is chastised. At this point Peele has done a very astonishing thing. Eager above all, apparently, to bring Solomon to the fore, he has David (at Bathsheba's insistence, as in I Kings 1) appoint him successor before he knows that Absalom is dead. This does give David and Solomon the opportunity for some very sententious exchanges on statecraft and metaphysics, but it enormously diminishes the effect of David's heartbroken lament (II Sam. 18 : 33) which, stretched from a score of words to 25 lines, now appears as a piece of grandiloquent bathos. 3 9 The play ends as David pictures Absalom enjoying an eternal Sabbath in heaven. Thus Peele, by concentrating on David's personal relationships, and by making his chronology 39

Quite rightly, Peele has not felt it necessary to bring in the events of II Samuel 19-24, in which are described David's reconciliation of the Saulites, the pursuit of Sheba, the wars with the Philistines, and the taking of the census. It may be worth remarking that throughout the play he ignores the rivalry between Israel and Judah. It did not in any way serve his moral purpose.

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purposely vague, has managed to cover the events of a generation in just over 2,000 lines. That this condensation reads like something better than an episodic chronicle play is due partly to the effect of continuity achieved and partly to the concept of retribution which serves to unify the first two acts. The belief that deeds which "displease the Lord" would be punished by misfortunes to the sinner and to his family was, of course, a central assumption of Hebrew historians. The authors of II Samuel are fully conscious of this doctrine and display its workings with great subtlety and psychological insight. Peele is not content to be subtle or to let the action speak for itself. He leaves nothing to chance, but pounds the moral home with a sledgehammer, and through choruses and characters warns his hearers against the sins of lust and pride. Lust is emphasized in the treatment of the Bathsheba episodes, and pride in the rebellion of Absalom. In the episodes in which Bathsheba and Nathan figure in the Bible (I Samuel 11, 12), the stress is not on lust. David continues to keep concubines (see for example 14 : 16 and 16 : 21) unreproved by Nathan or anyone else. His sin lies rather in his meanness in taking his loyal follower's "one ewe lamb" and in the despicable methods by which he tries to hide what he has done. Peele implies as much in his verse paraphrase of Nathan's interchange with the king (chapter 12), yet elsewhere he manages to tum the incident into a general indictment of unbridled sexual appetite by making both the principals denounce lust with great vehemence. Bathsheba protests that she "hates incontinence", that she does not wish to come to the king, and she urges David not to sully his fair name or her chastity, lest they both suffer from the effects of sin. Later she laments, "O what it is to serve the lust of kings!" and David himself admits that "proud lust" is the "deadliest traitor to our souls". The Chorus underscores the point. How often, he observes, "wretched man" Pursues with eagre and unstaunched thirst The greedie longings of his lothsome flesh ...

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This king, by giving unto lust her raigne, Pursues the sequell with a greater ill. 40

Evil begets evil, and lust leads to murder. If "holie David so shook hands with sinne", the moralizer concludes, ordinary mortals should be doubly on their guard. If "the love of David and Bethsaba" demonstrates the evils of lust, "the tragedie of Absalon" shows how catastrophe may overtake revengeful and rebellious pride. This theme is already implied in II Samuel, but Peele has enlarged upon it considerably. Behind the Tamar-Amnon-Absalom complications in the Bible lay the concept of the blood feud. Amnon's rape of his halfsister made Absalom's position a particularly painful one, as both the wronged person and the evildoer were members of his own family. As David, though angry, did not as head of the family punish Amnon, Absalom was bound by the obligations of the blood feud to take matters into his own hands. Peele was perhaps not quite clear on this point. He does, to be sure, make Absalom vow revenge on Amnon as soon as Tamar tells him what has happened ("Amnon shall beare his violence to hell"). But he indicates pretty clearly that he believes it was wrong of Absalom to kill his brother by having David, Adonijah, and the Chorus all condemn him on this point. David says specifically: Revenge not thou this sin; Leave it to me, and I will chasten him. 41

Adonijah voices horror at the murder in a manner which is certainly meant to be sympathetically received by the audience, and the Chorus comments on the "just doom" meted out to the unmerciful fratricide. It seems to me that Peele is really more interested in Absalom's pride than in the revenge motive. Already when he first promises Tamar that her rape will be avenged, Absalom implies that God is on his side against Amnon. But he knows how to smile and be a villain, for in honeyed words he issues his invitation to the sheepshearing feast. By the time the feast is prepared, he has con40 41

Manly, p. 441. Ibid., p. 435.

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vinced himself that he is a holy instrument of God's justice. Amnon is "accursed", and Absalom has vowed before the temple altar to see that his punishment is accomplished. Though according to the Bible Absalom has his servant do the actual killing, Peele has the revenger strike the blow himself, crying, "Die for the villainy to Thamar done", just as Amnon is paying him a compliment. 4 2 Hiding his intentions behind a mask of sorrow and regret, Absalom is planning to set up as a rival "judge", even at the very moment of reconciliation to David. As his rebellion gathers head, his pride increases to the point of recklessness. He does not heed the warnings of the concubines that he is a usurper who will come to a bad end, but insists that "heaven shall burn in love with Absalom". In his speech to the troops, beginning "Now for the crowne and throne of Israel", he announces that God will lead him with cloud and fire as He led Moses, crown him with stars, and bring him and his men to perfect happiness. As his pride in his beautiful hair has been emphasized throughout the play, even the accident by which he met his death is associated with his vanity. 4 3 Even when he is hanging helpless in the tree, he calls on God to "behold the glory of thy hand / And choicest food of nature's workmanship" and to "worke some wonder to prevent his death". Only when Joab's men attack him does he realize the danger. The attack and his dying moments are prolonged through four separate stabbings so that he may finally express remorse at his ill deeds and make his "last submission sound and full of 42

An effective bit of irony, of which the play has several instances. Actually Absalom's hair is not mentined either in the Hebrew text or the Septuagint. Both versions say that he was caught by his head. However, traditionally both in art and literature it has been assumed that it was Absalom's hair, the object of his vanity, which was the agent of his death. Peele would be familiar with the Second Book of Homilies of 1570, inspired in part by the Northern Rebellion, in which in the homily "Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion", the author observes that to Absalom the tree became a gibbet and his own hair a noose, while Achitophel for lack of a hangman had to hang himself. "A worthy end of all false rebels, who rather than they should lack due execution, will by God's just judgement, become hangmen unto themselves", comments the writer. See The Two Books of Homilies, ed. J. Griffiths (Oxford, 1859), p. 578. 43

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ruth", a sort of gallows repentance before the jeering soldiers cut down the "beauteous rebel" and throw his body in a pit Thus the "tragedie of Absalon" is presented in the familiar pattern of pride and its fall. The Chorus drives home the point by observing that Absalom was vain, cruel and greedy for power, setting too much store by earthly triumph and "fickle beauty". Once Absalom is removed, Peele seems to think he has worked out the retribution theme sufficiently, for he devotes the final act to rehabilitating David in the eyes of the audience and to building up the personality of Solomon as a more appropriate heir than Absalom, whom Joab now scornfully speaks of as a usurper. David's good qualities as a husband, father, and statesman are displayed. He has put promiscuous lust behind him and speaks to Bathsheba "whose beauty builds the towers of Israel" as his sole and dearly cherished mate, whose virtue, he says, serves to "cheere my pinings past all earthly joies". She in turn comforts him and praises him for his artistic gifts. Take but your lute, and make the mountains dance. Retrive the sunnes sphere and restraine the clouds, Give eares to trees, make savage lyons tame, Impose still silence to the loudest winds, And fill the fairest day with the foulest stormes: Then why should passions of much meaner power Beare head against the heart of Israel? 4 4

Though David sorrows over the news of Absalom's death, his conversations with Solomon show that he is a responsible ruler as well as an affectionate father. He urges Solomon to practice "such sacred principles / As shall concerne the state of Israel" and appoints him governor of the kingdom. Solomon is represented as a prince worthy of such a responsibility, conscious of his own uprightness, but humble in accepting his father's good advice. He is also full of intellectual curiosity and seeks to know How th' Eternali fram'd the firmament, Which bodies lead their influence by fire, And which are fild with hoarie winters yse, What signe is raignie, and what starre is faire, 44

Manly, p. 478.

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Why by the rules of true proportion The yeare is still divided into months, The months to daies, the daies to certaine howers, What fruitfull race shall fill the future world, Or for what time shall this round building stand, What magistrates, what kings shall keepe in awe Mens minds with bridles of th' eternali law. 4 5

This passage, in which Peele tries to suggest Solomon's future reputation for wisdom, gives the more humble David an opening for his most pious speech. He bids his son beware of too much curiosity about "things to come" which "exceeds our human reach". Rather Solomon should pray Transforme me from this flesh, that I may live Before my death, regenerate with thee! 4 6

Solomon immediately says that his spirit is lifted "above human bounds" and that "mounted on the burning wings / Of zeale devine" he "lets fall his mortali food". These lofty exchanges, as H. Dugdale Sykes demonstrated some years ago, were modelled on parts of Du Bartas' Les Semaines 4 7 and set the mood for the end of the play, where David, ready for death, hopes that Absalom will await him in a semi-Platonic, semi-Christian heaven where they will mingle with saints and angels, "taste the drinke of séraphins", and enjoy in an eternal Sabbath the beatific vision: And, the curtaine drawne, Thou shalt behold thy soveraigne face to face, With wonder knit in triple unitie. 4 8

Peele probably thought that he had increased the moral and religious value of his play by this neo-Platonic conclusion and by his didactic insistence on the evils of lust, vanity, and ambition. Actually, Peele's didacticism weakens the play rather than otherwise, for 46

Ibid., p. 480. Ibid., p. 481. "Peele's Borrowings from Du Bartas", Notes and Queries CXLVII (Nov. 1924), pp. 349-51, 368-9. Sykes shows that other passages in David and Bethsaba also echo Du Bartas, notably several descriptions of Bathsheba herself. 48 Manly, p. 486. 46

47

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it tends to turn a strong and moving narrative into a sentimental piece of moralizing. Paradoxically, too, Peele's talent as a poet weakens rather than strengthens his work. He can write lines of beauty and sensuous charm like, "On thy wings bring delicate perfumes / To play the wantons with us through the leaves" and "now comes my love tripping like a roe, / And brings my longings tangled in her hair". He can compose lyrics of haunting loveliness such as Bathsheba's opening song "Hot sunne, coole fire". The trouble is that this style is inappropriate for most of his subject matter. Even for the love scenes it is a little oversweet and in the revenge and death scenes it often degenerates into empty bombast Where the original has often strength, nobility, and power, Peele's verse paraphrases are too often weak, sentimental and effeminate. Compare, for example, the Biblical account of Uriah's refusal to take his ease with Peele's. The Old Testament reads: The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my Lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? as thou livest, and as thy soul liveth, I will not do this thing. 49

Peele's expansion makes Uriah sound like an elegant but smug courtier: The king is much too tender of my ease. The arke and Israel and Juda dwell In pallaces and rich pavillions, But Joab and his brother in the fields, Suffering the wrath of winter and the sun: And shall Unas, of more shame than they, Banquet, and loiter in the worke of Heaven? As sure as thy soule doth live, my lord, Mine eares shall never leane to such delight When holy labour cals me forth to fight. s0

David's grief and humiliation at being driven from Jerusalem are described in a single verse, moving in its simplicity: And David went up by the ascent of mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and has his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all 48 60

Π Sam. 11 : 11. Manly, p. 437.

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the people that was with him covered every man his head, and they went up, weeping as they went up. 61

Peele has turned this into a liturgical lament in which David, Zadok, Ahimaaz, Jonadab, and Ittai all take part: It begins, DAVID ZADOC

AHIMAAS

Weepe, Israeli for Davids soule dissolves, Lading the fountaines of his drowned eyes, And powres her substance on the sencelesse earth. Weepe, Israel! O weepe for Davids soule, Strewing the ground with haire and garments torne, For tragicke witnesse of your heartie woes! O, would our eyes were conduits to our hearts, And that our hearts were seas of liquid bloud. To powre in steames upon this holy mount For witnesse we would die for Davids woes! 52

Worst of all is the vulgarization of the moving "O Absalom, my son, my son", which begins Die, David, for the death of Absalon, And make these curses newes the bloudy darts That, through his bowels, rip thy wretched breast! 53

and goes on in this vein for about twenty lines. The taut, direct, and powerful narrative of the original has been replaced by ornate, overblown rhetoric. The effect of this is to vulgarize the emotions expressed, sap the vitality of the characters, and make both the moralizing and the Platonic passages sound false and unconvincing. Yet in spite of his inadequacies and excesses, Peele was experimenting in the right direction. His was the merit of attempting something great. David and Bethsaba has a touch of epic quality, as its strong-willed passionate characters of royal blood play out their dramas of lust, revenge, love, ambition, politics, and war. The play is saturated with the color and complexity of the Renaissance. Beauty and horror, grief, and heroism mingle. The characters raise questions about the universe and their place in it, 51 52

53

II Sam. 15 : 30. Manly, p. 456.

Ibid., p. 483.

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and at times express their emotions in poetry of sensuous and lyric beauty. Like Grimald, Peele was feeling his way toward romantic tragedy, the form Shakespeare was to handle with such power, ease, and grace. Even if his reach exceeded his grasp, the attempt was well worth making.

4. QUEEN HESTER AND PROUD HAMAN From about 1585 on small groups of English actors toured Germany and the Netherlands, playing at the courts of princelings and taking with them many English plays. 5 4 An anthology of these plays, Englische Comödien und Tragödien, published in 1620, contains two Biblical "comedies", Königen Esther und Hojjärtigen Haman55 and Das Comedia Von dem Verlomen Sohn. Königen Esther was played at Dresden in 1626 along with Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and Hamlet, and was on the boards as late as 1665. It may be the same work as "Heaster & Asheweros" played, according to Henslowe's Diary, at Newington in June, 1593. Queen Esther and Proud Haman does not seem to owe anything to several earlier Latin and vernacular treatments. Nor does it, like Godly Queen Hester, contain much political satire. The author is interested in the story primarily as an exciting and entertaining romance, though its moral lessons are not entirely overlooked. In addition to the regular book of Esther, the author consulted the chapters in the Apocrypha, where he found a more dramatic account of Esther's suit before the king, prayers by Esther and Mordecai, and several other useful details. The play follows the Biblical narratives closely. Act I covers Ahasuerus' 64

See Ernst Leopold Stahl, "Die Englischen Komödianten", in Shakespeare und das Deutsche Theater (Stuttgart, 1947), pp. 10-28; Albert Cohen, Shakespeare in Germany (London, 1865), Introduction. 65 Reprinted in Deutsche Dichter des Sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, XIII, as Die Schauspiele der Englischen Komedianten in Deutschland, ed. Julius Tittman (Leipzig, 1880).

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feast for the display of his majesty and magnificence, Vashti's disobedience, and the decision to punish her by setting her aside; Act II shows the search for beautiful maidens, the discovery of Esther, the King's satisfaction with her, and Mordecai's exposure of the palace plot. Act III enlarges on Hainan's power and his antipathy to the Jews, the despair of Mordecai and Esther, and the latter's decision to approach the King, while the last act deals with her dramatic appeal to the king, her banquet, the fall of Hainan, the rise of Mordecai, and the revocation of the edict against the Jews. This already theatrical story has been reshaped here and there to bring out more fully its inherent tragicomedy features. The virtues of Esther, Mordecai, and the King are heightened, the villainy of Haman is blackened, the pathos of the situation is deepened. The moral implications of the story are clarified and underlined. A whole comic underplot is inserted. These alterations and additions are intended to increase the suspense, deepen the sympathies and antipathies of the audience, and make them laugh. The author has wisely concentrated his attention (in the main plot at least) on the four main characters. Most of the minor palace officials and functionaries have been omitted. Bigthan and Teresh, the two conspirators who plan to kill the king, are also used as the officers appointed to seek out the maiden candidate for the king's favor. Incidentally, they are also provided with motivation - jealousy of Haman. Haman himself is brought forward much earlier than in the Bible, where he does not appear until after the plotters have been hanged. He is present at the council which discusses Vashti's disobedience and it is he (not Memucan as in Esther 1 : 16) who proposes that the king should make an example of her and issue the mandate ruling the general submission of all wives to their husbands. His antipathy to the Jews is revealed at the beginning of the play and is not, as in the Bible story, the result of Mordecai's refusal to do him honor. Haman's appearance so early in the play means that his relationship with Esther can be treated throughout with effective irony. It is he who discovers her, rejoices in her as a "miracle of beauty", and presents her to the king. When she invites him to

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her banquet, he supposes that the occasion is to do him honor, and that his power and person have charmed her. Hating the Jews and Mordecai in particular and knowing (as he does not in the Bible) Esther's relationship to the latter, he is forced to dissemble before her and to drink a toast to his enemies in response to her ironic "I know you love the Jews", meanwhile flattering her with unctuous humility. Much is made of the hubris which precedes his fall. In two boasting scenes developed from hints in Chapter V, he displays his excessive pride in an almost hysterical manner. He exults that he is Fortune's favorite, that his power is unlimited, and that he and not the king is the real ruler. His ambition is represented as a threat to the throne, for other characters suggest that he had designs on the empire. Mordecai's refusal to bow down to Haman infuriates the latter almost to madness, and he prepares the gallows for his critic with every expectation of triumph. He insists that the gods will never allow him to come to harm, and his sudden fall reduces him (as in the original) to abject terror. The dramatist points the moral of his fall by putting into his mouth a long speech full of self-reproaches and warnings against pride, before he is finally knocked down and dragged unceremoniously off stage. This gallows repentance is a thoroughly Elizabethan touch, and is crowned by Ahasuerus' allusion to evildoers who fall into the pit they themselves have dug (Proverbs 28 : 10). Ahasuerus is less the oriental despot and voluptuary of history, than a bluff, good-natured monarch with high standards of kingship, warm-hearted ways, and sound religious instincts. The author has made as much as possible of Esther 1 6 : 7 (Apocryphal chapter), where the king hopes his rule may be quiet and peaceful for all men. He claims on every possible occasion that he wants to rule "with justice and righteousness" and to promote peace and harmony among his people. It is emphasized that his desire for harmony inclines him to the proposal to do away with the nonconforming Jews. Appeals to his mercy are sometimes (though not always) heeded, and he has very proper views on marriage, believing that man and wife should live together in peace and harmony. He chooses Esther for her virtue and always addresses

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her with high-flown endearments. 5 6 The other maidens whose nightly visits to his palace are so unselfconsciously described in the Bible do not go entirely unmentioned in the play, but we are left with the impression that the king has given up promiscuity now that he has found the ideal consort. As for his religious views, he is no pagan but a monotheist who humbly thanks God for his good fortune, quotes the Bible, and oozes pious commonplaces. Esther is perhaps less dignified and impressive than the Jewish heroine of the ancient story, but she is more romantically presented and her virtue and piety are, if possible, increased. There is a Cinderella touch about her first appearance clad in rags and recently bereft of her parents, but destined to be a prince's bride. Before she is "discovered", her relationship with Mordecai is sympathetically built up. He comforts her tenderly and promises to be a father to her; she responds with touching gratitude and promises "in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" to be a loyal and obedient daughter. When she is taken by Haman, she and her uncle part with tears and mutual vows to pray for each other. In spite of her poverty and humble station, her beauty, sweetness of disposition, and virtue are such as to attract the discerning eye of the king. The scenes which present the moral dilemma in which Esther is placed by Haman's attack on the Jews are the most exciting in the play. The author narrates nothing, but brings every phase of the action before us. In the Bible, the exchanges between Esther and Mordecai are verbal messages carried by palace servants, but in the play Esther feels she must see Mordecai face to face to explain why she is afraid to go before the king. When they meet, there is a very emotional scene as he reminds her of her duty to God and her people and of the loyalty she owes him. Her tears and her final "If I perish, I perish" are met by his assurances that God providentially intended her as the savior of Israel, and that she will earn her people's deathless gratitude. Esther's prayer (Apocryphal chapter 14) is turned into a short 56

Justified somewhat by Esther 2 : 17.

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but dramatic soliloquy, less pious 5 7 but more forceful than the original. Every detail of the Apocryphal account of her appeal to the king has been used. She faints twice at the sight of Ahaseurus in his kingly majesty and has to be kissed again to consciousness before she recovers sufficiently to invite her husband and Hainan to her feast. The banquet scene 5 8 is remarkable for her ironic demand that Haman should drink to the health of the Jews and for her impassioned appeal for her people on the grounds that "life is sweet". It is to her credit and the author's that she asks only for the deaths of Haman's sons, the general slaughter which mars the close of the Bible story being omitted. Mordecai is much the same shrewd, noble, and pious figure as in the Old Testament. His rôle as a good uncle is somewhat developed. He is concerned over Esther's religious life, her morals, and her reputation. He prays for her frequently, urges her to pray likewise, does not want her to live in sin with the king or to be hurt by "evil rumor". His piety and integrity are clearly illustrated and a great deal is made of his lamentation in sackcloth and ashes, when he is attended by three hooded figures who lament with him. The scene in which he refuses to join in the general acclaim of Haman is made the occasion of a debate between them on the propriety of giving undue honor to mere man. Mordecai reminds Haman that he is only human, that time will turn him to dust and ashes, and that reverence should be paid only to the God of Abraham. When Mordecai himself is raised to a position of power, he retains his humility, and displays his magnanimous spirit by trying to save from execution the innocent sons of his old enemy. Like Esther, he has been credited with a humane attitude toward his enemies. Perhaps as a relief from all this high-mindedness, the author, or perhaps the German adapter, has interspersed the serious drama with farcical scenes depicting the vicissitudes of Hans Knappkäse and his shrewish wife, whose doings occupy about 57

The expressions of sorrow at Israel's repeated sinfulness are omitted. She only prays that she and her people may be saved and their enemies confounded. 58 Sensibly not repeated as in the Bible.

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a third of the play. This subplot has been worked in with some skill, for the henpecked Hans is represented as much affected by the king's order that women should be submissive to their husbands. He also acts as the carpenter who builds the gallows ordered by Haman and as the hangman who finally carries him off for execution. There is a scene of mingled farce and irony when he attempts to measure the unsuspecting Haman for his own gallows. Basically he is the browbeaten husband familiar in folk tales and ballads who aspires to the taming of his shrew. Fortified by drink and Ahaseurus' mandate, he beats his wife until she is meek and obedient and even declares at his order that milk is pitch black. 5 9 There are farcical digressions in which Hans gobbles down his soup, or comes on weeping copiously, having eaten an onion in mistake for an apple. His long-lost son, Nickel, returns from France to display his skill in archery; Hans insists on trying out the bow, and mother and son together manage to entangle him in the bowstring, beat him until he cries for mercy, and in short reduce him to his normal condition of servitude to his wife. In Hans' rebellion against his wife's domination, there is perhaps a link with the main plot. Hans' use of force to gain unjust mastery over his wife, for example in making her say that milk is black, indicates that he has abused his power as a husband. Similarly, Haman's command that men bow down before him indicates that he has abused his secular power. Both villains are brought low by the same methods as they used, brute force in Hans' case and trickery in Haman's. Thus both episodes reflect the author's interest in the use and abuse of power. Above the two malefactors, Ahasuerus stands as a paragon, reflecting the proper use of power. At the end of the play Hans and his wife are brought before Ahasuerus, who exhorts them to live together in peace and harmony. When they insist that this is impossible, the king offers them a separation, to which they agree provided they may still "be friends at night". The whole Hans sequence is characterized by vulgarity and coarse humor which accords ill with the serious 89

Compare The Taming of the

Shrew.

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court scenes, but which probably went down well with the audience and provided the company's clown with opportunities to disport himself in the expected manner. The story of Esther, then, has been dramatized with conscious theatricality and with modifications appropriate to a Renaissance audience.

5. THE COMEDY OF THE PRODIGAL SON

The second Biblical play in the German anthology of 1620 is The Comedy of the Prodigal Son. 60 Performances of this comedy or others by the same name are recorded at half a dozen German cities in the first part of the seventeenth century. Presumably, like much of the Comedians' repertoire, it was based on an English original, possibly the lost Portraiture of the Prodigal Sonne, entered in the Stationers' Register in November, 1598. The comedy resembles Graphaeus' popular work Acolastus, translated into English in 1540 by Palsgrave, in representing the father as prepared to allow his son complete freedom, in presenting the son as hypocritical, unfilial, and lustful, in dwelling at some length on the tavern scenes, and in using quotations from other parables. However, Acolastus had many imitators and most of these features turn up in other prodigal plays. Unlike some English prodigal plays, such as Nice Wanton and Disobedient Child, the author of the present comedy does not falsify the parable by emphasizing purely prudential virtues - thrift, foresight, temperance, obedience - but emphasizes forgiveness, which is the theme of the original parable (see Luke 15 : 11-32). In two respects the Comedy is rather different from most Dutch and German treatments. It uses allegorical figures, Despair and Hope, in the scene in which the son comes to his senses, and it devotes the whole of the last act to a very full treatment of the elder brother's jealousy and resentment and of his reconciliation with his father. Both the sons appear in the first scene where the elder warns 80

For English text see The School of Shakespeare (London, 1878), II. The translator, Richard Simpson, thought he had discovered a "barbarized" last work by Shakespeare.

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his brother against gambling and wildness and tries to persuade him to stay at home, but the young fellow "will have a scuffle in the world" and find "where the best and prettiest damsels be". His father also warns him against gaming, unchaste women, and "lascivious company", but the Prodigal, although he pretends to listen carefully, whispers to the audience that he has not heard one word. The tavern scenes show how this particular Prodigal wasted his substance. Thanks to his stupid servant, who boasts of his master's wealth, the youth is soon involved with a greedy tavernkeeper who pushes his daughter on his victim. Her practiced flattery soon wins him over, while her father prepares a lavish feast. After they have made the youth tipsy, they cheat him at cards. The daughter steals her lover's money while he lies asleep and slips it to her mother. The host protests that they are honest people and seizes the youth's goods and clothes, the daughter herself pulling off his doublet and hose. They hustle him out into the street wearing only an old castoff garment. A voice from behind a tapestry announces that there is a famine and we see the Prodigal begging in vain. Satan in the character of Despair tells him that he will perish with hunger and be damned eternally. "Therefore", he concludes, "thou must now fall into Despair. Take this sword and cut short thy life". The sinner, overwhelmed, is about to obey when Hope comes "running in haste", wrenches the sword away, and drives Satan out, throwing the sword after him. She reminds him that God will forgive a true penitent: "Bear now thy cross with patience and doubt not of God's grace ... He will relieve thy hunger". Sure enough, a passing citizen takes pity on him and we next see him on his way to feed the swine. He is now fully conscious of his sins, thoroughly penitent and humble. In this low state, however, Despair once more attacks him, telling him that God has forsaken him. Once more Despair offers him the sword and once more Hope snatches it away, assuring the sinner that faith, hope, and penitence will preserve him. It is she who suggests the speech, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee", and she who leads him homeward.

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The rest of the play only elaborates slightly on the parable. We see the father yearning over his lost, thriftless but much-loved son, the son timidly approaching, aware now of the sorrow he has caused. The speeches of reconciliation are exchanged and the robe of sonship is restored. The dramatist has given this episode additional point by contrasting it with the nakedness of the boy after his experience of sin. The scene where the elder brother complains that he is being treated unfairly is close to the New Testament, except that the father expresses himself in more theological language: he explains that the sinner has been converted and is now a fellow-heir of eternal life. The Pauline allusion 6 1 wins the elder son over: "You have rightly corrected me. I am heartily glad that my brother is converted and that he with us may inherit God's kingdom. Now I will go in with you and be merry". Apart from the moralizing at the beginning and the tendency to theologize at the end, this is not a bad treatment of the parable. The central religious idea in the parable is preserved. The tavern scenes are brightly done and the innkeeper's family quite well characterized. A festive atmosphere is created as the musicians play, the girl exerts her charms, and the house-proud mother trots in and out with grapes, pastries, and a staggering variety of wines. The girl pretends to be shy and innocent, but her real character, that of a heartless wanton, is soon apparent. Her father similarly pretends to be what he is not, for he jokes, asks riddles, and acts the hospitable host, hiding his malicious, surly dishonesty from the rather stupid Prodigal - a simple, weak, foolish character reminiscent of the protagonists in Youth and Lusty Juventus. He is perhaps a failure, for it is difficult to see how such a shallow, silly fellow could really be sensitive enough to turn homeward with a full repentance on his lips. The use of the allegorical figures Hope and Despair show what a hold allegory had on the sixteenth century. These scenes could almost have come from a morality play of a hundred years before.

61

Rom. 8 : 17; Gal. 3 : 29 and 4 : 7; Eph. 3 : 6.

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CONCLUSION

In fact what strikes one about this last group of plays is the debt they owe to earlier decades. None of the subjects was new. Esther, Absalom, Jonah, and the Prodigal had all appeared before, and as for the themes, usury, bribery, lust, pride, ambition, selfishness had all been castigated many, many times. Both A Looking Glass and The Prodigal Son are, in a very real sense, elaborate morality plays. David and Bethsaba and Queen Esther do not use morality features but are as solidly didactic as any morality play. Three of the four plays are politically didactic. Rasni, David, and Ahasuerus are all studies of imperfect kings who learn the lessons of experience and become better. Solomon is presented as the ideal king in training. The incidents concerning both Absalom and Haman are strained a little so that each appears as a type of usurper - the favorite criminal of Elizabethan political moralists. Yet in spite of this didacticism, the authors do not defend themselves on the grounds that they were moralists. They do not feel bound to write prefaces justifying themselves, as the humanists of the forties did. It was probably enough for them that they found theatrical stories with good acting rôles such as Rasni, Absalom, Esther, Mordecai, the Innkeeper and dramatized them so as to bring out themes which were relevant to their times.

CONCLUSION

Looking back at the century's Biblical drama, one is struck by the extent to which the plays mirror the history of the Reformation in England. In the twenties we have criticisms of ecclestiastical hypocrisy in the youth plays and an attack on Wolsey, a symbol of the worst forms of clerical pride, in Godly Queen Hester. When Lutheran teachings merge with anticlericalism and the early battle for Protestantism is intense, Bale writes his powerful anti-Catholic polemic dramas. This tradition of fighting Protestantism is carried on to limited extent by Grimald in the next decade, and with dogmatic zeal by Foxe in Christus Triumphans in 1551. In the main Biblical drama is Protestant drama. Catholic writers do not make use of the theatre for offence or defence. Christopherson's Jephthe is a humanist exercise, theologically neutral. With the victory of the Anglican party in Elizabeth's reign, anti-Catholic propaganda is less necessary. We do find Lodge and Greene praying that Elizabeth may continue to be a pillar of strength "against the stormes of Romish Antichrist", but in the main new motives replace the propaganda impulse. Biblical events are dramatized because they are good stories with sound morals. The passion for proof-texts which characterized Puritanism is reflected in the plays, as is its moral fervor. But in the end Puritanism probably worked against the writing of Biblical plays, since Biblical drama suffers a decline at the end of the century. Though sixteenth century Biblical drama is in the main a Protestant drama, it has many links with the past. Bale's habits of mind were as much influenced by medieval patterns of thought as by Luther and Tyndale. Grimald's Christus Redivivus is a Re-

CONCLUSION

193

surrection play with a veneer of classicism, showing its Protestant cast mainly in its direct use of the scriptures. Much in Wager's Magdalene would have been acceptable a hundred years before. The pattern of sin and suffering followed by redemption, even apotheosis, familiar in miracle plays, still has an appeal and is found in plays as different as John Baptist's Preaching, Archipropheta, and David and Bethsaba. The morality tradition, too, is still strong, widely used in the early years of Elizabeth and as late as The Comedy of the Prodigal Son. The ancestor of the prophet-commentators in Looking Glass can be traced back through "Balaeus Prolocutor" to the medieval preacher-commentator. Satire in the plays, too, is an unbroken tradition. Rooted in medieval homily and expressed in the shepherd's talk in the work of the Wakefield master, the impulse to criticize and correct society appears, for instance, in the strictures on social climbers in The Cruel Debtor, on dishonesty and lechery in Susanna, and on a society rotten from top to bottom in Looking Glass. Though sometimes using classical and continental models, English writers never seem to have been slavishly imitative, handling their sources freely as circumstances and their own tastes suggested. This probably accounts for the variety to be seen in the twenty-five plays discussed here: we have Protestant mysteries, Euripidean tragedy, Senecan tragedy, romantic tragedy, melodrama, Terentian comedy, several varieties of tragicomedy, besides a collection of mixed forms which include dramatized polemic, Biblical moralities, and homiletic satire. There are even elements of the masque in Christus Triumphans, and of the comedy of manners in the early scenes of Marie Magdalene. In short, we have in sixteenth century Biblical drama what we find in Tudor drama as a whole - rugged native roots, capacity for assimilating foreign elements without being enslaved by them, deep concern with morality in the individual and society, awareness of theatrical values, and remarkable variety. Why then, did Biblical drama practically die out a generation before the closing of the theatres? After Elizabeth's death there are a couple of "shows" on Solomon and the Whore of Babylon, there are mystery plays still in Cornwall and Jesuit plays at St.

194

CONCLUSION

Omer's. But as far as the public stage was concerned, the genre was finished. Why was this? Had the Henslowe series satiated the public with scriptural topics? Had all the best stories been used too often? Did court taste, which increasingly influenced writers, not favor Bible plays? Probably the most powerful factor is the most obvious one - the continuing spread of Puritanism, the deepening austerity of the Puritans. In the early days of the Reformation, the leftwing Protestants had some stake in the Biblical drama as a vehicle for their ideas. Their early seventeenth century counterparts, in contrast, were trying to get the theatres closed. Thompson 1 notes in this period "a rapid increase" in the quarrel between the Puritans and the stage, "a widespread and growing opposition of the sober class against theatrical exhibitions of all sorts", "particularly marked in the early years of the new century". Perhaps this opposition particularly discouraged the use of Biblical material. Patrick Cruttwell, indeed, notes with sorrow the separation of religion from drama, at least for the time. 2 After David and Bethsaba and Looking Glass, hardly major works of the University Wits, none of the great Elizabethan dramatists essayed a Biblical play. This is especially remarkable in the case of Shakespeare, who used such a variety of sources and who knew the Bible well. Cruttwell suggests that he was discouraged by the solemn, sober ProtestantPuritan attitude, its overserious treatment of the Bible. "We may wonder if [he] ever regretted it - if he ever looked with longing and irritation at the magnificent dramatic materials which the Bible would have given him and which he could never use". 3 1

E. N. S. Thompson, The Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage (New York, 1903), p. 127. 2 The Shakespearean Moment (London, 1954), p. 143. Similarly Glynne Wickham regrets the passing of "a drama of cosmic scope" and the divorce of the drama from religion. He compares England unfavorably with Spain, where Calderón was able to write religious plays as well as secular ones, whereas "in England, despite the galaxy of dramatic talent that flowered in the lifetime of Lope de Vega (1642-1636) and Calderón (1600-1681), no play of any consequence devoted to an avowedly religious subject was written for public performance by professional actors after Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (1588)". (Vol. II, pp. 19,61). 3 Cruttwell, pp. 143-144.

CONCLUSION

195

It was left for the next English genius of first rank, a Puritan but not antisensualist or anti-aesthetic, to plan an epic drama of the fall of man and to write a Biblical tragedy worthy both of its source and of the classical standards of its author.

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INDEX The various colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are not listed. They will be found under their respective universities.

Abraham and Lot, 160 A braham Sacrifiant. See A braham's Sacrifice Abraham's Sacrifice, A Tragedy of, 26, 123, 124, 125, 145-48, 154 Absalom (author unknown, Worcester's Men), 161 Absalom (Watson), 79, 80, 81-88, 117 Acolastus, 122, 188 Advent Antiphons, 55 Adversus Execrabilim Antichristi Bullam, 40 Against Scoffers and Backbiters, 36, 37 Against the Corrupters of the Word of God, 36, 37 Ajax, 68 Anglorum Heliades, 36 Answer, 36 Anthony and Cleopatra, 98 Antichrist theme, 15, 20, 21, 28, 38-40, 41, 44, 47, 60, 68, 70, 71, 80, 106-17, 120, 122, 124, 127, 136, 156, 170, 192, See also Bale, Three Laws, John Baptists Preaching Udall's Ezechias; Foxe's Christus Triumphans; and King Darius Aquinas, Thomas, 30, 43, 45 Archipropheta, 80, 88, 94-101, 102, 117, 193 Aristotle, Poetics, 27, 79 Ascham, Roger, 79, 80, 81 Ashton, Thomas, 122-23, 124

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 121 Balam and Balak, 56 Baldwin, T. W., 82 Bale, John, 7, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 28, 29-63, 65, 67, 69, 80, 81, 88, 94, 95, 100, 101, 115, 121, 122, 131, 135-36 Baptism and Temptation, The, 48 Baptistes (Buchanan), 78, 88, 100 Barnes, Robert, 31, 35, 40, 45 Barnstaple, plays at, 34 Barptolomaeus Lochiensis, 27, 92 Beverley, plays at, 120 Bevington, David M., 8 Beza, Theodore, 25-26, 123, 124, 145-48 Bilney, Thomas, 30, 31, 32, 35, 63 Birck, Sixt, 122, 142-145 Bletz, Zacharias, 28 Boas, F. S„ 8, 82 Boleyn, Anne, 65 Braintree, plays at, 124, 155 Bucer, Martin, 119-20 Buchanan, George, 78, 79, 94, 100, 122 Calvin, John, 24-26, 145, 148, 153, 157 Cambridge, plays at, 34 Cambridge University, 28, 30, 35, 65, 66, 79, 80, 102, 103, 116, 122, 123, 143 Campbell, Lily B., 8 Canterbury, plays at, 120 Captivi, 89

INDEX Carmelitis, 29, 30, 31, 32, 55, 65 Carpenter, Frederic Ives, 135 Castellio, Sebastian, 26 Castle of Perseverence, The, 20, 43 Catherine of Aragon, 71, 72, 75 Censorship, 156-59 Chambers, E. K., 81-82 Cheke, John, 79 Chelmsford, mystery plays at, 13, 124, 155, 156 Chester Cycle, 13, 14, 18, 56, 91, 155, 156, 158 Chettle, Henry, 161 Christ and the Doctors, 36, 37, 48 Christopherson, John, 7, 9, 28, 79, 80, 81, 102-106, 118, 121, 122, 192 Christ's Burial and Resurrection, 91 Christ's Passion, 36, 37, 48 Christ's Resurrection, 36, 37, 48 Christus Nascens, 80, 94 Christus Redivivus, 80, 88-94, 116, 192 Christus Triumphans, 40, 70, 80, 106-17, 120, 122, 123, 192, 193 Christus Xylonicus, 27, 92 Collins, J. Churton, 162 Colwell, Thomas, 124, 136 Comber, Thomas, 116 Comedie von dem Verlorenen Sohn, Das, See Prodigal Son, The Comedie of the Comedy, 77-78, 119 Comedy of Errors, The 154 Comedy of the Prodigal Son, The, See Prodigal Son, The Comedy of the Cooke, Sir Anthony, 121 Cornwall, plays in, 14, 158, 193 Coronation of the Virgin (York), 18 Council of Bishops, The, 48 Coventry, mystery plays at, 13, 18, 56, 124, 155, 156, 157 Coverdale, Matthew, 66 Cox, Richard, 94, 121 Craig, Hardin, 8, 157 Craik, T. W., 9 Cranmer, Thomas, 30, 31, 34, 66 Creed Play at York, 156, 157-58

203

Crocus, Cornelius, 24, 78, 88 Croke, Richard, 30 Cromwell, Thomas, 29, 33-34, 35, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 81 Crucifixion Plays, 18 Cruel Debtor, The, 21, 124, 125, 128-31, 136, 193 Cruttwell, Patrick, 194 Darius, King, See King Darius David and Bethsaba, 160, 171-82, 191, 193, 194 Davis, Geoffrey, 31 Day George, 31 Defensor Pacts, 33, 34 Dekker Thomas, 160, 161 De Regno Christi, 119 Destruction of Jerusalem, The, 157 De Vera Differentia Regia Potestis et Ecclesiasticae, 33 De Vera Obedientia, 33 Disobedient Child, The, 120, 149, 188 Donatus, 77 Doncaster, plays at, 155, 156 Downes, Geoffrey, 31 Dramatica Sacra, 142 Du Bartas, Guillaume, 179 Durham, plays at, 155, 156 Eck, Johann, 38 Edmunds, John, 31 Edward VI, 8, 29, 65, 119, 120, 122 Elizabeth I, 7, 8, 14, 29, 46, 47, 68, 81, 120, 121, 122, 123, 140, 143, 144, 155, 158, 170, 192, 193 English Comedians in Germany, 9. 160, 161, 182, 188 Englische Komödien und Tragödien, 182 Erasmus of Rotterdam, 24, 30, 65, 78, 93 Essex, plays in, 155-56 Esther and Ahasuerus, 160 Euripides, 79, 102, 118, 193 Everyman, 19, 20, 21 Exortation to the People..., 33 Ezechias, 66-68, 122

204

INDEX

Fenton, Geoffrey, 24, 159 Foxe, Edward, 31, 33 Foxe, John, 8, 15, 19, 29, 40, 70, 80, 81, 106-17, 118, 120, 122, 123, 192 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 164, 166 Frischlin, Nicodemus, 78 Frith, John, 31, 40, 63, 115 Funeral Monuments, 158-59 Gammer Gurton's Needle, 154 Gardiner, Stephen, 31, 33, 34, 35, 65 Garrard, Thomas, 35 Garter, Thomas, 124, 136-42, 155 Geneva, plays at, 26 Gibson, Thomas, 34 Gismund, 101 Glass of Truth, A, 33 Glossa Ordinaria, 59, 100 Gnaphaeus, Guilelmus, 122, 188 God, represented on stage, 26, 158, 162 Godly Queen Hester, 21, 70-76, 124, 125-26, 130, 182, 192 God's Promises, 48, 49, 51-58, 124 Golden Legend, The, 39 Golding, Arthur, 145, 148 Goodrich, Thomas, 30 Gorboduc, 101 Gosson, Stephen, 24, 159 Greene, Robert, 9, 160, 161-71, 192 Greff, Joachim, 26, 27-28 Greville, Fulke, 123 Grimald, Nicholas, 7, 8, 15, 18, 28, 58, 79, 80, 81, 88-101, 102, 116, 117, 118, 182, 192 Grindal, Edmund, 121, 157-58. Haman, 26 Hamlet, 182 Handlyng Synne, 44 Hankey, John, 158 Harmon, Richard, 31 Harrowing of Hell Play (Bale), 37, 92 Hartwell, Abraham, 66-68 "Heaster and Asheweros", 182

Hecuba (Erasmus), 78 Hegge Plays, The, 16, 18, 56, 91 Heli, 122 Henry VIII, 29, 33, 35, 37, 42, 46, 62, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 75, 115, 119, 122 Henslowe, Philip, 160, 161-62, 171, 182, 194 Hercules Furens, 88 Heretic Luther, 70 Herford, C. H., 8 Hickscorner, 22 Hitchin, Radcliffe's plays at, 65, 94 Hoker, John, 79 Homulus, 88 Horace, De Arte Poetica, 79 Home, Robert, 121 Houghton, William, 161 Howard, Catherine, 35 Hunnis, William, 148 Hus, John, 39, 115 Hus, John, play on, 65 Hutton, Matthew, 157, 158 Image of Love, The, 48 Iphigenia (Erasmus), 78 Iphigenia (Euripides), 102, 146, 147 Ipswich, 71 Isaac, Sacrifice of, plays about, 15, 77 Jackson, Hugh, 136 Jacob and Esau, The History of, 120, 123, 124, 125, 148-53, 154 Japhthah (Dekker and Munday), 161 Jephthe (Christopherson), 79, 80, 81, 102-106, 122, 192 Jephthes (Buchanan), 78, 79, 80 Jerome, William, 35 Jewby, Edward, 161 Jewel, John, 121 Job (Greene?), 155, 160 Job (Radcliffe), 65 Jocasta, 101 Johannes Decollatus, 78, 95 "John baptiste" (Buchanan?), 122 John the Baptist, Life of, 36

INDEX

John the Baptist's Preaching, 48, 49, 50, 58-63, 100, 193 John the Evangelist, 22 Jonah, 65 Joseph (author unknown; at Geneva), 26 Joseph (Crocus), 78, 88 Joseph, plays about, 78 Josephus, Antiquities, 95, 163 Joshua, 161 Judas (Houghton, Rowley, Bird), 161 Judas (Kirchmayer), 26 Judith, 65 Julian the Apostate, 122 Julius Caesar, 182 Kendal, mystery plays at, 14, 159 Kilkenny, Bale's plays at, 50 King Darius, 20, 21, 124, 125-28, 130, 136 King David and Fair Bethsaba. See David and Bethsaba King John (Bale), 34, 36, 37, 38, 46-47, 122 King John (Shakespeare), 47 King John, The Troublesome Reign of, 47 King Lear, 182 Kingston, Surrey, plays at, 155, 156 Kirchmayer, Thomas, 26, 40, 47, 48, 80, 107, 115 Rnollys, Sir Francis, 121 Königen Esther und Hoffärtigen Haman. See Queen Esther and Proud Haman Kyd, Thomas, 88 Lady Public Weal, 71 Lancaster, mystery plays at, 13 Lanckfeld, Georg. See Macropedius Latimer, Hugh, 31 Lazarus, plays about, 18, 65, 77 Lazarus (Radcliffe), 65 Lee, Edward, 32 Life and Repentance of Marie Magdalene, The. See Marie Magdalene

205

Lincoln, mystery plays at, 13, 15, 88, 120, 156, 157 Local color, 97, 152-53 Lodge, Thomas, 9, 160, 161-71, 192 London, 120, 124 Looking Glass for London and England, A, 155, 160, 161-71, 191, 193, 194 Lord's Supper, The, 48 Love of King David and Fair Bethsaba with the Tragedy of Absalom. See David and Bethsaba Lucerne, plays at, 26 Lusty Juventus, 120, 190 Luther, Martin, 24-25, 26-27, 30, 38, 40, 44, 56-57, 63, 70, 115, 192 Macropedius, 26, 77, 78, 89 Magdalene (Digby), 17, 18, 131 Magnificence, 70 Mandeville's Travels, 75 Marie Magdalene, The Life and Repentance of, 124, 125, 131-136, 154, 193 Marriage at Cana, 28 Marshall, William, 34 Marsilius of Padua, 33, 34 Mary (Queen of England), 8, 50, 65, 81, 102, 120, 121, 156 Mary (the Virgin), 19, 64, 91, 110, 156 Medea, 88 Melanchthon, Philip, 24-25, 27, 33-34 Menaechmi, 122 Merill, L. R., 95 Microcosmus, 79 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 16 Milton, John, 116, 195 Miracle plays, 13, 14, 61, 142 Misogonus, 120, 149 Morality plays, 7, 13, 19-23, 30, 59 More, Thomas, 31 Morebath, Devon, plays at, 155 Morison, Richard, 34 Most Virtuous and Godly Susanna, The. See Susanna, The Most Virtuous and Godly

206

INDEX

Munday, Anthony, 159, 161 Mundus et Infans, 22 Mundus Plumbeus, 79 Mystery plays, 13, 14-19, 30, 61, 155-159 Nativity Plays, 15, 156 Nebuchadnezzar, 161 Neoclassical plays, 7, 77-118 Newcastle, plays at, 155, 156 New Romney, plays at, 155, 156 Nice Wanton, 120, 188 Norfolk, Duke of, 34 Northbrook, John, 24, 159 Norwich, 30, 31, 32 Norwich, mystery plays at, 13, 15, 18, 124, 155, 156 Obedience of a Christian Man, The, 45 Oberammergau, 93-94 Odyssey, The, 80 Oedipus Rex, 122 Old Custom, 69 On Papistical Sects, 36, 37 On the Lord's Prayer, 36, 37 On the Seven Sins, 36, 37 On the Threefold Law of God. See Three Laws On the Treacheries of the Papists, 36, 37 On the Treachery of Thomas à Becket, 36, 37 On the Two Marriages of the King, 36, 37 Oxford, Earl of, 32 Oxford University, 28, 65, 71, 79, 80, 81, 94, 97, 106-107, 157 Palsgrave, John, 188 Pammachius, 40, 47, 48, 80, 107 Parker, Matthew, 31, 121 Parr, Catherine, 65 Parr, William, 102 Passion of Christ, 124, 125, 156 Passion Plays, 15, 26-27, 93, 122, 123 Pater Noster Play at York, 156, 157-58

Paul, St, 26, 30, 38-39, 57, 64, 107, 109, 111, 136, 167, 169 Peele, George, 9, 160, 171-82 Phaedra, 88 Piscator, 79 Platter, Felix, Selbstbiographie, 26 Plautus, 77, 78, 79, 88, 89, 116, 143 Play of the Three Patriarchs, 28 Plutus, 79 Pontius Pilate (Dekker?), 160, 161 Preston, mystery plays at, 13, 159 Pride of Life, The, 19 Privy Council, 14n, 158, 159 Prodigal Son, The Comedy of the, 160, 161, 188-190, 191, 193 Prodigal Sonne, Portraiture of. Same as Prodigal Son, Comedy of? Prodigal Son Plays, 22, 25, 77, 120, 128-29, 148-49 Prophet Plays, 15, 56. See also John Baptist's Preaching, Archipropheta, Looking Glass for London and England, A Protomartyr, 80 Puritans, 157, 159, 160, 195 Queen Hester and Proud Haman (same as Esther and Ahasuerus?), 160, 161, 182-88, 191 Radcliffe, Ralph, 7, 28, 64, 65, 94, 125 Raising of Lazarus, The, 18, 48, 49 Ralph Roister Doister, 66, 154 Rastell, John, 34 Rebhun, Paul, 28 Rede Me and Be Not Wroth, 71, 75 Redman, John, 102 Regina Literata, 66 Release of the Pope, The, 70 Resurrection, The, 26 Resurrection of Our Lord, The (same as Christ's Passion?), 37 Resurrection Plays, 15, 16, 18, 142 Revelation of Antichrist, 40 Reverend Receiving of the Sacrament, A, 64 Richardus Tertius, 123

207

INDEX

Ridley, Nicholas, 31, 81 Roman Comedy, 23, 77, 78, 88, 116, 148 Rome, 64, 108, 109, 156 Romeo and Juliet, 182 Roo, John, 71 Rowley, Samuel, 161 Rude Commonality, 64 Rueff, Jacob, 28 Rupp, E. G - 31 Sachs, Hans, 26 St. Omer's, 193-94 Samson (played at Red Lion), 124 Samson (Rowley and Jewby?), 160 Samson (Ziegler), 78 Samson Agonistes, 116 Sandys, Edwin, 121 Sapientia Solomonis, 122, 123, 124, 125, 142-45 Saul, 26 Savage, Sir John, 158 Schoepper, Jakob, 78, 95 Schoolmaster, The, 79 Semaines, Les, 179 Seneca, influenced of, 78, 79, 82-88, passim, 193 Sentences, The, 63 Shakespeare, William, 16, 18, 47, 98, 101, 142, 154, 182, 194 Skelton, John, 70, 74 Shoreditch, plays at, 69 Short Catechism, 63 Shrewsbury School, plays at, 122, 124, 156 Sidney, Sir Philip, 122-23 Simon the Leper, 48 Smith, John Hazel, 82 Smith, Wentworth, 161 Smythe, John, 157 Sodom and Gomorrah, 65 Sophocles, 79 Spalatin, Georg, 24 Spanish Tragedy, The, 88 Speak, Parrot, 75 Speculum Naturale, 43 Stafford, George, 30 Starkey, Thomas, Exhortation, 33-34

Stichus, 122 Stymmelius, Christoph, 25 Summarium, 36, 47 Susanna (Geneva), 26 Susanna (Radcliffe), 65 Susanna, The Most Virtuous and Godly, 78, 124, 125, 136-42, 154, 155 Sykes, H. Dugdale, 179 Taverner, Richard, 34 Temptation of Christ, The, 48, 49, 50 Terence, 24, 25, 77, 78, 81, 88, 89, 116, 148, 193 Tewkesbury, plays at, 155, 158 Textor, Ravisius, 77 Thersites (Textor?), 79 Thetford, plays at, 34 Thompson, E. N. S., 194 Three (or Two) Brothers (Worcester's men, same as Absalom?), 161 Three Laws, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41-46, 51, 54, 59, 107, 124 Thyestes, 88 Tobias (author unknown, at Lincoln), 157 Tobias (Chettle), 161 To the Christian Nobility, 44 Townley plays, 56 Tragicomedy, 77-78, 80, 89, 141, 154 Tragedy, 77-78, 117, 119, 176, 178, 182

Troades, 122 Troublesome Reign of King John, The. See King John, The Troublesome Reign of Tunstall, Cuthbert, 103 Two Sins of King David, The, 124 Tyndale, William, 30, 31, 35n, 45, 57, 63, 115, 192 Udall, Nicholas, 7, 64, 65-68, 122, 148 Vincent of Beauvais, 30, 43, 54-55 Vives, Johannes Ludovicus, 27

208

INDEX

Von dem Leyden und Sterben auch die Aufferstehung unsere Herrn Jesu Christ, 93 Wager (first name unknown), 124, 128-31 Wager, Lewis, 124, 131-36, 193 Wakefield Master, 16 Wakefield, mystery plays at, 14, 155, 156, 158 Watson, Thomas, 79, 80, 81-88, 117, 121 Weaver, John, 158-59 Westminster School, 65, 123, 124, 143-45 Why Come Ye Not to Court? 74 Wickham, Glynne, 9, 13, 14, 156, 158, 159

Wilde, Sebastian, 93 Winter's Taie, The, 18 Wise and Foolish Virgins, The, 123, 124 Wolsey Thomas, 17, 70-76 Woman on the Rock, in the Fire of Faith, A, 64 Worcester, mystery plays at, 13 Wycliff, John, 39, 115 Wylley, Thomas, 64 York Cycle, 13, 14, 16, 18, 91, 92, 124, 155, 156 Youth, 22, 190 Youth Plays, 21-23, 120, 148-49, 190 Zaccheus,

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