Quarles as Dramatist

Abstract

Although usually considered a static genre, the emblem book on occasion achieves form and structure that provide analogies with plays created for the theater. Perhaps the most impressive and coherent dramatic element in emblem literature that derived from a devotional tradition based on the biblical Song of Songs, or Canticles. A part of exegetical and homiletic literature since the third century, this interpretation of the text, which Origen called a drama,1 views the Song as an account of the love between Christ and the human soul. It a romance; and the Divine Spouse frequently not present, it the Parable of the Absent Lover.2 Origen had called the Song a drama because many persons speak, but, being concerned with scriptural exegesis rather than theater, he did not discuss dramatic structure or theory. The Song presented the most profound of spiritual mysteries, he insisted matters too sacred to display openly before the vulgar, but which the Holy Spirit had caused to be roofed over with allegory.3 Origen 's interpretation was rooted in rabbinical tradition, notably the work of Akiba ben Joseph (A.D. c. 50-1 35), who had declared: All the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs the Holy of Holies, adding that the whole world is not worthy of the day on which [it] was given to Israel.4 For the rabbis, the romance had been between God and Israel; for the Fathers it was between Christ and the Church. Origen, the only early Patristic writer to include the individual soul as well, indicates that Anima and Ecclesia are interchangeable recipients of the Spouse's affections.5 Although the Anima tradition continued in private devotion, especially among mystics, the Ecclesia reading long remained the dominant one. Anima, however, was again to become prominent in St. Bernard of Clairvaux's eighty-six sermons on the Song in which he starts at the book's beginning and progresses only into the third chapter. The romance was especially to be dear to St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and was adopted as a