English Mystery Plays Research Articles

Handling Knowledge: Holy Bodies in the Middle English Mystery Plays

The representations of the midwife Salome and the Apostle Thomas in the N-Town and Chester plays complicate the relationship between two modes of knowledge: “clergie” or male clerical learning, on the one hand, and knowledge derived from sensory experience on the other. The plays expose clerical learning's dependence on and proximity to lay experiential knowledge. In doing so, they resist the dichotomies that structure other accounts of these figures and demonstrate how theological knowledge does not rest exclusively in any one set of hands. Knowledge, instead, is made manifest at the point of contact between clerical learning and physical experience. The drama empowers its nonclerical audience to test and “assay” in the form of dramatic “experiments” the theological knowledge that structures their religious lives, and thus invigorates the audience's investment in that knowledge.

Medieval Mystery Plays in the Modern World: A Question of Relevance?

The English Mystery Plays of the Catholic Middle Ages were both devotional and theatrical. This article investigates their ‘relevance for twenty-first century audiences that may not share the same faith. It considers how a number of playwrights have responded to the medieval genre to create new works that develop themes and narratives underlying the original texts. It argues that audiences for condensed versions of the Mysteries in the new millennium may be encouraged to process the performance intellectually and emotionally in similar ways. Two American plays are examined: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's The Mystery Plays (2001) and Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play (2005). The fifteenth-century plays from York are seen through the lens of the work of six modern dramatists who wrote ‘Modern Mysteries in direct response to their reading of a selection of the original episodes. These short plays were presented during the performance run of the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens. The script for the 2012 Mysteries, condensed by Mike Kenny for an evening's entertainment, and its performance by the community cast led by two professional actors, Ferdinand Kingsley and Graeme Hawley, confirms the potential of the medieval texts to forge a place in the modern imagination.

Medieval Mystery Plays in the Modern World: A Question of Relevance?

The English Mystery Plays of the Catholic Middle Ages were both devotional and theatrical. This article investigates their ‘relevance for twenty-first century audiences that may not share the same faith. It considers how a number of playwrights have responded to the medieval genre to create new works that develop themes and narratives underlying the original texts. It argues that audiences for condensed versions of the Mysteries in the new millennium may be encouraged to process the performance intellectually and emotionally in similar ways. Two American plays are examined: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's The Mystery Plays (2001) and Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play (2005). The fifteenth-century plays from York are seen through the lens of the work of six modern dramatists who wrote ‘Modern Mysteries in direct response to their reading of a selection of the original episodes. These short plays were presented during the performance run of the 2012 York Mystery Plays in the Museum Gardens. The script for the 2012 Mysteries, condensed by Mike Kenny for an evening's entertainment, and its performance by the community cast led by two professional actors, Ferdinand Kingsley and Graeme Hawley, confirms the potential of the medieval texts to forge a place in the modern imagination.

Discursive Competition in the Towneley Crucifixion

1 All quotations from the Towneley Crucifixion are from Towneley Plays, ed. Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley, 2 vols., Early English Text Society, s.s. 13 and 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 287-308. This and subsequent citations will be noted par enthetically within the text by stanza and line. manuscript, San Marino, CA, Hunting ton Library MS HM 1, recently has been dated to the mid-sixteenth century (Barbara D. Palmer, Recycling 'The Wakefield Cycle': Records, Research Opportunities in Renais sance Drama 41 [2002]: 88). MS most likely did not have any connection to actual per formance, and probably was copied from several exemplars (Stevens and Cawley, eds., Towneley Plays, xv and xxiv-xxv). 2 For the planctus's roots in both the Eastern and Western traditions, see Rosemary Woolf, English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 246 48; and Woolf, English Mystery Plays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 264-65. For further discussion linking the planctus with the Byzantine Marian lament, see George R. Keiser, The Middle English Planctus Mariae and the Rhetoric of Pathos, in Popular Literature of Medieval England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville: Uni versity of Tennessee Press, 1985), 169. For a discussion of the relationship between the non-dramatic English planctus and the miracle plays, see George C. Taylor, The English 'Planctus Mariae,' Modern Philology 4 (1907): 605-37. discursive similarities and devotional motifs common between English medieval drama and the English religious lyrics of the late Middle Ages are far too numerous to be listed here, but see Taylor's The Relation of the English Corpus Christi Play to the Middle English Religious Modern Philology 5 (1907): 1-38; and Woolf's English Religious Lyric, passim, and English Mystery Plays, passim. 3 Scholars have long challenged the idea that the Towneley plays constitute a uniform cycle compiled by a single author/reviser. There is not the space here to detail the some times contentious debate concerning the authorship and provenance of the plays, but for an account of the major arguments, see Palmer, Recycling 'The Wakefield Cycle,'

Remembering Doomsday: memoria in late medieval English drama and iconography*

Much critical attention has been devoted in recent years to the analysis of the medieval artes memorativae. The concern with the arts of memory, as exemplified by the recently collected translation...

PETER HAPPÉ. — Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004, 349 pp.)

PETER HAPPÉ. — Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004, 349 pp.)

:Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and Their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts

Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays is centred upon the five extant English mystery cycles with a view to examining the cyclic form they share. It is based upon consideration of the differences between the texts and upon the underlying assumptions governing this dramatic form. The cycles are extensively compared with practices in the cyclic dramas of France, the German-speaking areas, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain in the late middle ages and the early modern period. There is also a unique and innovative bridging with iconographical material from a range of artistic modes giving further insight into the structure and organisation of cyclic form. Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays should be of interest to undergraduate students and to more experienced researchers in the early drama and the study of visual images and artefacts. Contents: 1. Cyclic Form (I) 2. Cycles and Iconography 3. Continental Analogues: A Review of Allied Forms – France and Germany 4. Continental Analogues: A Review of Allied Forms – Italy. The Netherlands and Spain 5. English Practice 6. Cyclic Form (II)

PETER HAPPE, Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts. Pp. 349 (LUDUS: Medieval and Early Renaissance Theatre and Drama 7). Amsterdam and New York, Rodopi, 2004. Hardbound 80.00 (ISBN 90 420 1652 3); paperbound 30.00 (90 420 1662 0).

IN this clear and accessible book Peter Happé argues that cyclic form was an intentional creation of medieval drama. In order to explore the sophisticated effects created by this form, Happé performs an admirably thorough survey of the cyclic mode in iconography, continental drama, and later works such as John Bale's projected dramatic cycle. The breadth of Happé's study means that this book is full of interesting nuggets of information, such as the influence of Francisan thinking on this kind of drama, or the way in which the roof bosses of Norwich Cathedral create a unique version of cyclic form: the ribs of the ceiling forming an objective correlative to the web of allusion between the various episodes. Also by approaching medieval storytelling from this angle, Happé shows how embellishments of the biblical narrative can engage with the cyclic structure of the whole. For example, in both the Holkham Bible Picture Book and Passion Catalane–Occitane a childhood story which interacts with Christ's infancy is created for one of the actors in the Passion narrative. In the former, the pentitent thief prevents his father from robbing the holy family on their way into Egypt. In the latter, the Massacre of the Innocents compels Judas's mother to send him away, which results in him re-enacting the tragedy of Oedipus. Cyclic form, in both drama and iconography, encourages the creation of stories and images which circle round the central event of Christ's Passion.

Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and Their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts. Peter Happé

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsCyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and Their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts. Peter Happé Barbara D. PalmerBarbara D. Palmer Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 80, Number 4Oct., 2005 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400001809 Views: 6Total views on this site Copyright 2005 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Peter Happé, Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts

Peter Happé, Cyclic Form and the English Mystery Plays: A Comparative Study of the English Biblical Cycles and their Continental and Iconographic Counterparts

Performing Reform: Lay Piety and the Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the N-Town Cycle

Performing Reform: Lay Piety and the Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the N-Town Cycle Emma Lipton University of Missouri–Columbia The cult of the Virgin Mary was strong in the late Middle Ages: the life of the Virgin was told in many texts, and new feasts of the Virgin were added to the Ecclesiastical calendar.1 Curiously little attention, however, was given to the subject of her marriage. There was no feast for the marriage of the Virgin and few of the late-medieval English texts that tell the life of the Virgin devote more than passing mention to it.2 This lack of emphasis is particularly odd given the important role the Virgin’s marriage played in the development of the theology of the sacramental nature of marriage, from Augustine to I would like to thank Sarah Beckwith, Lee Patterson, Judith Ferster, and Gail McMurray Gibson for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this essay. 1 See R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 40–61, 97–115. New feasts of the Virgin added in the late Middle Ages include The Visitation (1389), The Compassion of the Virgin (1497), and The Presentation of the Virgin (1372). 2 On the uniqueness of the attention devoted to Mary and Joseph in the N-Town plays, see Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1972), pp. 161. For other late-medieval English texts recounting the life of the Virgin, see Joseph A. Lauritis, Ralph A. Klinefelter, and Vernon T. Gallagher, eds., A Critical Edition of John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady, Duquesne Philological Series, no. 2 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961); Roscoe E. Parker, ed., The Middle English Stanzaic Versions of the Life of Saint Anne, Early English Text Society [hereafter EETS], o.s., 174 (London: Oxford University Press, 1928); and Michael G. Sargent, ed., Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992). Earlier versions of the life of the Virgin also give little attention to the subject of her marriage, including the acknowledged sources for the N-Town Mary plays, most notably The Golden Legend. See Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). The story of the Life of the Virgin is contained in the Greek Protevangelium, the Latin Gospels of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary, and later in the Legenda aurea and the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi. 407 ................. 8972$$ CH13 11-01-10 12:22:10 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard, which became the basis for the canon law practiced in the courts of England throughout the Middle Ages. However, the subject of the Virgin’s marriage was given unusual emphasis in the late-fifteenth-century manuscript BL MS Cotton Vespasian D.8.3 This manuscript contains one of the four surviving English mystery play cycles, a composite and in many ways unique dramatic collection, commonly known as ‘‘N-Town.’’ Compared to the other cycles and other late-medieval English Lives of the Virgin, the manuscript pays unusual attention to the subject of her marriage, devoting an entire play to the subject, ‘‘The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,’’ that contains within it a wedding ceremony enacted according to contemporary liturgy . The cycle’s preoccupation with the marriage is also evident in ‘‘The Trial of Mary and Joseph,’’ in which a conspicuously pregnant Mary and her husband are tried for adultery. The emphasis on the life of Mary in the N-Town cycle may be explained by the probable existence of an separate and self-contained Mary Play added to preexisting cycle material when the manuscript was compiled .4 Both ‘‘The Marriage of Mary and Joseph’’ and ‘‘The Trial of Mary and Joseph’’ are believed to have been part of the original cycle, although the former probably also contains material from the Mary Play.5 3 A date of 1468 written on the manuscript gives a terminus ad quem for the cycle, but the play may have been performed or written down...

The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form

Introduction Part I. The Foil: Latin Church Drama: 1. Liturgy and drama 2. Liturgical point of view surrounding the dramatic core dialogue 3. 'World-containing' situations 4. The dramatization of narrative sources Part II. The English Mystery Play: 5. The origins of the Mystery Play and its stage 6. The representation of time and space in the cycles 7. Address to the audience 8. Intra-dramatic speeches 9. Conclusions Bibliography.

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form. By H. J. DILLER. Translated by FRANCES WESSELS. Pp. xvi+336 (European Studies in English Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. £45. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Edited by R. BEADLE. Pp. xxii+372 (Cambridge Companions to Literature). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Cloth, £35; paper, £11.95. The Chester Mystery Cycle. Edited by D. MILLS. Pp xxxiv+444 (Medieval Texts and Studies 9). East Lansing: Colleagues Press; Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1992. Cloth, £29.50; paper, £10.95. SARAH CARPENTER SARAH CARPENTER University of Edinburgh Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XLVI, Issue 182, May 1995, Pages 250–252, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XLVI.182.250 Published: 01 May 1995

The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form.Hans-Jürgen Diller , Frances Wessels

<i>The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form.</i>Hans-Jürgen Diller , Frances Wessels

The Devil and Society in the English Mystery Plays

L'A. s'interesse a la fonction sociale remplie par le Diable dans l'economie des mysteres chretiens joues en Angleterre. Expression subversive de la frustration et de la protestation issue des classes oppressees ? Caution theologique au pouvoir en place ? Le Diable est peut-etre tout cela a l'interieur de ce theâtre sacre mais l'A. desire montrer ici combien ces deux theses sont partielles face a la complexite de la societe. En s'appuyant sur de nombreux extraits tires de ces œuvres, il met en lumiere dans quelle mesure le diable deborde sa fonction theologique traditionnelle pour devenir la traduction d'une ambivalence sociale

The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form by Hans-Jürgen Diller

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER can imagine him smiling wryly at the clutter of scholarship and the clatter of dropped names, but surely he would have taken great pleasure in the collection's array of engagements with literature and life. This world may be but a fair, but it has some damned good shows and rides; Chaucer knew that full well, as did the forceful and witty Chaucerian who is being hon­ ored in this book. Here is a lively wake for a much-missed man. A. J. MINNIS University of York HANS-JURGEN DILLER. The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dra­ matic Speech and Form. Trans. Frances Wessels. European Studies in En­ glish Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: Pp. xvi, 336. $69.95. With the publication of Hans-Jurgen Diller's The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form, Cambridge University Press adds one more title to its European Studies in English Literature series. The book is a somewhat updated translation of Diller's Redeformen des en­ glischen Misterienspiels, originally published in 1973. Although a fair num­ ber of recent bibliographic citations have been added, the book's thor­ oughly New Critical stance--along with its text-centered assumptions­ has not been changed, as Diller admits in his Introduction (p. 4). Unfor­ tunately, this makes for a book that, despite some real flashes of formal brilliance, acts mainly as a reminder of how far drama criticism has shifted during the last twenty years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when this study was originally writ­ ten, early English play texts were routinely considered as stable units of poetical composition, offering mainly stylistic clues to their most impor­ tant features. The order ofthe day was to situate the texts historically so as to facilitate their critical assessment, usually along thematic lines. In the 1960s critics like Eleanor Prosser (Drama and Religion in the English Mys­ tery Plays: A Reevaluation, 1961) and V. A. Kolve (The Play Called Corpus Christi, 1966) puzzled over chronological linkages and notional frames and contemporary appeal-the same items, now in new bottles, that had inter­ ested E. K. Chambers (The Mediaeval Stage) at the beginning of the cen­ tury, and Hardin Craig (English Religious Drama in the Middle Ages) in 178 REVIEWS 1955. In the early 1970s, despite the seminal work of 0. B. Hardison (Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages, 1965), evolutionary claims about the medieval drama were still being made and disputed, often without reference to larger cultic, cultural, musical, theatrical, or other performative issues. Manuscripts were still largely seen as having captured plays fixed in time and space and theatrical presentation, rather like late­ medieval versions of Peter Shaffer's Equus, with its rigid and specific de­ mands that control any director attempting a production. The reception and performance histories of these essentially public scripts were largely ignored in the early 1970s, as were more basic questions about how play­ scripts achieve meaning within the spaces they inhabit. In short, when this book was originally written, medieval play texts were neither historicized nor theorized in ways that we might now expect. The Middle English Mys­ tery Play reflects all these old critical tendencies, though it adds a formalist insistence on the importance of dialogue to signal relationships between characters and audience, between event and meaning. The book is a diffi­ cult read, though, and abstruse in ways that show the limits of a formally trained and historically oriented new critic groping at concepts beyond the range of available terms. Diller's main thesis follows Lukacs's observation that the language of dramatic texts incorporates, exemplifies, and links two spheres, or worlds: the audience world (or "ordinary" or "First" world) and the play world (or "dramatic" or "Second" world). How these distinct worlds connect seems a promising topic indeed, particularly for the study ofmedieval theater, since the popular tradition mixed the two worlds more unabashedly than any other form ofdrama until the time ofBrecht. Curiously, however, while the title of the book promises an investigation of the great mystery cycles, Diller starts out in part 1 with four chapters devoted to...

The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form by Hans-Jürgen Diller

The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form by Hans-Jürgen Diller

The Renaissance discovery of Classical antiquity (review)

Reviews 191 has brought to bear on Henry VIII's second queen. Ives believes that Anne was misrepresented by friend and foe dike. H e sees her as an honest, intelUgent and strong-minded woman with a clear notion of what a queen's role could be and a determination to undertake it appropriately. Despite her few days as queen, he believes she made an active, not merely passive, impression on the direction English reUgion took by her influence on clerical appointments and her network of connections. Sybil M . Jack Department of History University of Sydney Taylor, B. S. and M. Rogerson, eds, The York Joseph and Mary Plays, Sydney, University of Sydney, Department of English, 1988; pp. viii, 40; R.R.P. A U S $3.00. All teachers of the English cycle drama will appreciate why Betsy Taylor and Margaret Rogerson have prepared this student-friendly edition of York XIII (Joseph's Troubles about Mary) XIV (The Nativity) XIX (The Flight into Egypt) and X X I (Christ and the Doctors in the Temple). Editions of complete cycles are neither affordable by, nor linguistically accessible to, most of our students, but modernized versions, acceptable as they may have been when medieval drama was the antiquarian's province, now read as very inadequate substitutes. Peter Happe's composite cycle (English Mystery Plays, Penguin, 1975) introduces extra problems for students as the dialects switch from play to play. Taylor and Rogerson provide texts in normalised spelling with margind glosses and foot-of-the-page translations, and just enough other information to satisfy the average reader and enable the interested reader to discover where to go next. Since the plays 'have in common the presence of Joseph and Mary as characters' (p. iv), and are apparently selected for that reason, the interested reader may well ask about the significance of 'character' in these plays. This edition is silent on that. Mary Dove Department of English University of Melbourne Weiss, J., The Renaissance discovery of Classical antiquity, 2nd. ed., Oxford, Blackwell, 1988; p. xii, 233; 16 plates; R.R.P. A U S $29.95. Blackwells of Oxford, publishers of both its journal, Medium Aevum, and the related monographs of the Society for the Study of Mediaevd Languages and Literature, issued in 1941, as one of the latter, Humanism in England During the 192 Reviews Fifteenth Century by R. Weiss (second edition, 1957). In 1969, in the year of his death they also published his, The Renaissance discovery of Classical antiquity. Both volumes are admirable and exact surveys of aspects of (pre-) Renaissance humanism, pre-Tudor English scholarship in thefirstcase, and in the second Italian concern with 'the concrete legacy of classicd antiquity' (p. xii), from the early fourteenth century to 1527. Thus the last book is really a history of classical archaeology in its early stages, showing how such scholars as Flavio Biondo, Bernardo Rucellai and Poggio Bracciolini sought to rescue, or, at any rate, record 'what was still left of classicd Rome', before it should findly vanish. The d m of Weiss was to give an account of the rise and early development of an interest in the tangible Roman remains - statues, coins, inscriptions, physical ruins - as an invaluable commentary on the ancient texts surviving. The present edition contains a detailed further bibliography (1969-1987) sectionalized by chapters, containing nearly 100 relevant items. It is, thus, indispensable to historians of archaeology, numismatics, antiquarianism and an incomparable introduction to 'modem' perceptions of classicd antiquity. J. S. Ryan Department of English University of N e w England ...

Music in the English Mystery Plays by JoAnna Dutka

Music in the English Mystery Plays by JoAnna Dutka

Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays

Anti-Semitism and the English Mystery Plays Stephen Spector The general tone of the medieval English mystery plays is affirmative. The early religious drama conveys a triumphant vision of temporal and cosmic symmetry that was designed to comfort and sustain the believing Christian. Yet there also exists within the plays a mood of unrelenting hostility, and this is directed in large part toward the disbeliever, the Jew. The mys­ tery plays comprise, in fact, one of the most vehemently antiJewish genres in the history of English literature. I propose in this article to explore the character of this anti-Jewishness and to speculate about its function. I shall argue that the perspec­ tives and dynamics of the drama parallel those of classic and clinical anti-Semitism: that the drama not only distorts and stereotypes the Jew, but more particularly that it assigns to the Jew the unwanted aspects of the Christian community and con­ sequently execrates him. I offer this analysis both in order to address an important issue that has been too often ignored, and also to attempt a more temperate and adequate assessment than those which now exist. This study is not an indictment of a single group, but rather a consideration of human failings. I describe here a mode of self-justification and self-defense that can operate in all men, Jews as well as Christians. Hannah Arendt, Jacob Katz, and others have demonstrated Jewish complicity in historical reli­ gious recriminations,! and this must be explored, as must Chris­ tian offenses, in the hope that both can be better understood and therefore avoided. Most of the critics who discuss the anti-Semitism of the religious drama do so with an indignation that impedes accurate appraisal. Their work is neither systematic nor analytical, but only loosely descriptive and condemnatory. For example, Ed3 4 Comparative Drama ward N. Calisch says in The Jew in English Literature that in the New Testament plays “there is no accusation [against the Jews] too horrible, no charge too monstrous to prevent its being given credence and repetition.”2 M. J. Landa says in The Jew in Drama that “in every possible way the representation of the medieval drama vilified the Jew,” and he adds that the Jews “were fair game for the merciless sport of the ignorant people whom the ecclesiastical writers of the Mysteries and the Miracle plays were anxious to impress. The convention of the Jew of the stage was thus bom amidst fanaticism, intolerance and ignor­ ance. . . .”3 These critics are right to condemn the anti-Semitism of the plays, but they are mistaken in their assessment of the insult and, in Landa’s case, in the attribution of motive. The Jews in many of the plays are demeaned, but not in “every possible way.” Rather, their vices are precisely and consistently delineated, and the nature of these vices reveals much about the plays themselves. To ascribe these stage-portraits to fanaticism, intolerance, and ignorance, as Landa does, is to ignore the sig­ nificance of the Jew to the drama—and to the community that wrote, produced, and attended the plays. That significance can be discovered by comparing the antiJewishness of the plays with the dominant psychoanalytic theory about real-life anti-Semitism. This conception of antiSemitism was first tacitly suggested by Sigmund Freud, and has since been reiterated by historians, social commentators, and clinical psychologists. In essence, it portrays the anti-Semite as a person who condemns in the Jew those qualities, real or attributed, that he cannot tolerate in his experience or in himself .4 The anti-Semite attempts to externalize inner conflicts and to relieve anxieties by unconsciously scapegoating the Jew.5 He seizes on the Jew because the Jew is the available or cultur­ ally-defined target, the suspect, alien element in the community, and he projects onto the Jew dangers that the anti-Semite finds threatening. In this way, the anti-Semite’s personal responsibility for his problems is reduced, and the problems themselves are readily located in an external and convenient repository: the Jew. The attributes perceived in the Jew are a function of the anti-Semitism, and will therefore reveal more about the...