Soft Touch: On the Renaissance Staging and Meaning of the "Noli me tangere" Icon

Abstract

In a brief article called `Do Not Embrace Me' as Icon published in the December 1988 issue of Notes and Queries, argue that Viola's admonition to her newly recovered twin Sebastian in act 5.1.251 of Twelfth Night alludes to the episode in John 20:11-17 where Mary Magdalen, in search of the crucified body of Christ, mistakes the resurrected Christ for the gardener. (1) During a short catechism, Jesus implies the inappropriateness of Mary's tears with the question that, just before, the angels attending the tomb have posed to her: Woman, why weepest thou? When Christ calls her by name, she recognizes him as Rabboni (Master), and he immediately warns her, Touch (Noli tangere) because, he says, I am not yet ascended to my Father. He instructs her to find the disciples and inform them that she has seen Christ resurrected. Viola's words to Sebastian include several features of this biblical passage. At first, Viola and Sebastian not recognize one another. They catechize one another, almost absurdly, about parentage and birthmarks to establish who they are. Most telling, once Cesario has been identified as Viola, she forbids Sebastian to touch her until her female identity has been fully restored: If nothing lets to make us happy both Than this my masculine usurp'd attire, Do not embrace till each circumstance Of place, time, fortune, cohere and jump That am Viola which to confirm, I'll bring you to a captain in this town, Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help was preserv'd to serve this noble count. (5.1.249-56) (2) In a subsequent essay, Yu Jin Ko, taking the allusion in Viola's speech to Christ's Noli tangere for granted, refers to Violas do not embrace me as a gesture of that qualifies as internal stage direction. (3) For Ko, Viola's delay of Sebastian's embrace works into the play's larger concern with longing, and Ko elaborates on many instances in the play when desire dies just as it is achieved. Ko's reading ultimately focuses on Viola's repulse of Sebastian's embrace but not on the two other parallels between the passages: the matter of mistaken identity and the questioning between parties. The result is an engaging interpretation of the play but an incomplete study of an embedded stage direction that, shall argue, is richly informed by its medieval dramatic history and by contemporary Northern Renaissance images of the Noli tangere icon. Close examination of these associations also suggests that the icon lies embedded at the close of The Winter's Tale. The Noli tangere icon appears in European liturgical drama as early as the twelfth century, where it is part of the Type III Visitatio sepulchri, in which the three Marys and the disciples Peter and John visit Christ's tomb, only to find it empty. The icon persists in the Towneley mystery cycle, where it is included as part of the Resurrection play, as well as in the Digby manuscript's Mary Magdalen, a saint play. It also forms part of the Resurrection play in two manuscripts of the Chester mystery cycle, (4) appears in the N-Town cycle, and was likely a feature of the Coventry pageants, which the Cappers' took over from the Weavers' in 1531, although this and other probable inclusions are now lost. (5) Dramatic records from Coventry suggest that the hortulanus scene from John's Gospel remained part of the performance until 1579, when the plays were suppressed. (6) The records also list costumes, properties, wigs, and the like throughout much of the sixteenth century for the three Marys and, in particular, a costume identified in an inventory as mary maudlyns goune remaining as late as 1591. (7) That the icon provided a source of continuous cultural interest in sixteenth-century Northern European--an interest that bridged the Reformation--is attested by the numerous Northern Renaissance popular prints of the subject, most of them by Protestant artists. …