Miraclis Pleyinge Research Articles

On the Unruly Power of Pain in Middle English Drama.

Late medieval culture tends to value pain highly and positively. Accordingly, much medievalist scholarship links pain with fear and emphasizes their usefulness in the period's philosophy, literature, visual art, and drama. Yet, key moments in The York Play of the Crucifixion, The Second Shepherds' Play, and The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge trouble the significance of pain and its relationships with punishment and performance; these works admit the unreliability of pain and fear, even as they harness the formidable power pain holds throughout Middle English literature. This essay analyzes passages from all three texts to demonstrate their deep skepticism about the signifying power of pain alongside their abiding investments in pain's utility. I argue that these texts ultimately challenge Middle English drama's dominant discourses of patriarchy and empire by way of their representations of pain.

The Drama of Reform: Theology and Theatricality, 1461–1553 by Tamara Atkin (review)

Reviewed by: The Drama of Reform: Theology and Theatricality, 1461–1553 by Tamara Atkin Clifford Davidson Tamara Atkin. The Drama of Reform: Theology and Theatricality, 1461–1553. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013. Pp. x + 195. €23.70. Tamara Atkin’s book opens with a quote from the Histrio-Mastix (1633) by the anti-theatrical writer William Prynne, who translates a passage from Honorius Augustodunensis (twelfth century) that affirms a connection between the priest celebrating Mass and acting in the theater; for example, “by the stretching out of his hands, he denotes the extension of Christ upon the Crosse.” Prynne, like Protestant polemicists of the first half of the sixteenth century, saw Roman Catholic ritual to be empty shows disconnected from substance and lacking in integrity. Actors in his view are hypocrites, who pretend to be what they are not. Atkin then sets out to provide an extended examination of how early Reformation dramatists, similarly distrustful of the liturgy and especially of the Eucharist, were happy to use drama “to undermine the rituals, symbols, plays, and processions of the Roman Church and promote reformed alternatives” (9). Chapter 1, however, takes up the late medieval Croxton Play of the Sacrament, a Host desecration drama involving the skepticism of some Jews concerning the real presence in the Eucharist, and in so doing once again revives for discussion Cecilia Cutts’s view of it as anti-Wycliffite polemic. The drama, like other Host miracles such as the popular Mass of St. Gregory so often appearing in iconography, is a strong affirmation of transubstantiation, and at the conclusion the perpetrators (their blasphemous act is described as like a “new turmentry” or repetition of the Crucifixion), on account of the seriousness of their crime, will require baptism and absolution by the higher authority of a bishop. The miraculous appearances shown in the play are nevertheless not real but only signs, revealed in the rubrics when a cauldron is described as boiling over with what is “apperyng to be as blood,” that is, not actual blood (55). Atkin compares the staged events, seemingly miraculous, to the miracles claimed by the monks of Hayles Abbey at the display of their relic of the Holy Blood, which would be revealed by reformers to be false (“it is but duckes bloode,” 61). Having myself witnessed a showing of a relic of the Holy Blood at Bruges many years ago, I [End Page 95] cannot see a direct comparison here. The blood in the Croxton play is not an actual devotional image, but rather is like one, albeit designating a purported fact: the ability of the Eucharist to perform miracles. The chapter ends with the suggestion that the mid-sixteenth-century manuscript of the Play of the Sacrament might have been copied from its fifteenth-century original for a Protestant who wished to show its theatrical “tricks” in order to reveal the deceptions practiced by the Catholic clergy upon the ignorant (63). While this supposition seems highly unlikely to me, it does provide a rationale for including Atkin’s discussion of this play in her book. The odd placement here of her comments on A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge (55–59) does also serve to tie her discussion better to the subsequent chapters in which plays by Protestant playwrights and anti-theatricalism are discussed. More pertinent to the Play of the Sacrament is Margaret Aston’s convincing argument that “not all illusions were to be equated with delusion” and that spectators “could both revere the miraculous and respect the limitations of physical enactment” (quoted 58). Bale’s polemic in his Three Laws and in King Johan is designed to link Roman Catholic ritual with deceptive and delusional play-acting, the perversion of biblical and theological truths, and the subversion of social order and religious values. His views are characterized by psychological splitting, dividing social and personal reality into good (represented by himself and the Protestant faith) and extreme evil (invoking the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, the Devil, and Antichrist). Thus, as Atkin points out, “Bale’s extant plays are less concerned with the instruction of religious truth than they are with the exposure of erroneous belief and custom” (67), with the...

Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama by Clifford Davidson (review)

Clifford Davidson. Corpus Christi Plays at York: A Context for Religious Drama, with contribution collaboration with Sheila White. AMS Studies the Middle Ages, No. 30. New York: AMS Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 242. $84.50. English medieval drama, which has come down us only small body texts, has produced stunning amount research into its contexts. Clifford Davidson, who established the EDAM (Early Drama, Art, and Music) Project at the Medieval Institute Western Michigan University the 1970s (1) (and for long time was editor Comparative Drama) is one the most prominent pioneers this truly interdisciplinary approach. The very first sentence the book review states that the importance the local in historical time and (ix), for the study the Corpus Christi plays was brought home him more than forty years ago, on his first visit St. Michael-le-Belfry near York Minster. The title modestly promises a context, but with equal justice one could distinguish five or six contexts. These do not strictly coincide with the subject matter one chapter each, but there certainly is distribution emphases. Chapter 1 (York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays) concentrates on the social and administrative context and offers important insights into local conflicts surrounding the production the pageants. Guilds often pleaded poverty that prevented them from participating. After the Reformation there was also reluctance on the part individuals, as the four drapers who refused support their guild's Death the Virgin 1554. The Corporation York harshly rebuked this great encoragyng suche lyke wilfull persones and disordre the sayed craftes (11; after REED York 1:313). The wording suggests that the refusal reflected more general mood, but it also shows that the Corporation felt strongly about continuing the plays. In 1569, year after Elizabeth's succession the throne, they were banned under pressure from the ecclesiastical authorities (16), but against, apparently, the wishes most York's citizens (167). Chapter 2 (The York Plays and Visual Piety) concentrates on an aspect religious mentality and devotes considerable space the effect playing out the Passion scenes. While allowing that the spectators were not necessarily uniformly reverent (49), Davidson concludes that Bakhtinian spirit blasphemous Schadenfreude about Christ's suffering at the hands the Torturers is most unlikely. Strong support for this view comes from the antitheatrical, Wycliffite Tretise Miraclis Pleyinge, which admits that the Passion plays often move spectators to compassion and devocion, wepinge bitere teris (50). The subject is also touched on chapter 3 section (67-69) called Blood, Suffering, and Devotion, and the book returns it the final, collaborative chapter. In the main, chapter 3 (The Color Devotion) deals with the painters' contribution the overall effect the pageants; it benefits particularly from Davidson's earlier work on the material culture medieval York. Chapter 4 (The Pageant Route, the City as Stage, and the Sacred), which treats the physical context the pageants, is special interest that it touches on the relationship between the Corpus Christi procession and the Corpus Christi play or pageant. The traditional view that the play or plays somehow evolved from the procession is almost certainly untenable. In the York records, which are far from providing complete picture, however, the first mention the play antedates that the procession, if only by year. (2) Plays growing out of the procession have created logistical problems that seem impossible overcome. As Davidson puts it, instead ever having been joined, it is more likely that the pageants and the procession had always been separate (87). But even this arrangement would have involved logistical complication (87). …

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...

Drama, Play and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period (review)

Reviews 173 Parergon 20.2 (2003) Clopper, Lawrence M., Drama, Play and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002; cloth; pp. 384; RRP US$45.00; ISBN 0226110303. Lawrence Clopper’s Drama, Play and Game is less a study of dramatic modes than a study of dramatic ‘communities’. It should be acknowledged, however, that the title of the book suggests a much wider field of study than what is truly offered. Clopper’s interest is clearly weighted toward medieval England and its attention to early modern culture is limited to the persistence of selected medieval dramas in the mid-sixteenth century. The success of this book lies in Clopper’s convincing challenge to traditional scholarly treatment of English drama as having undergone an ‘evolutionary’ development from biblical drama, through morality plays to Elizabethan popular theatre. The reader is left with a clear sense that medieval plays display a variety of styles, locations and performance imperatives that varied according to the communities through which they emerged, rather than a single course of linear evolution. The Introduction and first two chapters are concerned largely with the emergence of early medieval anti-theatricality, despite the absence of a theatre industry, or theatrum like that of ancient Rome. Clopper points to the fact that, while there was no theatrum in medieval England, there was enough anxiety about public display and festive culture to see theatrical terminology become stigmatising metaphors for immorality. Chapter Two explores how anti-theatrical discourse actually provided for the development of ‘legitimate’ theatrical modes such as biblical and morality drama by defining them against more undesirable forms of public display. The author insists that scholars must look beyond the fourteenth-century Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge. Through a process that is, by his own admission ‘tortured’, Clopper argues that, contrary to popular opinion, this is not the only anti-theatrical document surviving from medieval England (p. 105). Equally, anti-theatricalism was not restricted to scripted stage plays. The emergence of pejorative theatrical metaphors ‘does not point to the existence of an actual theatre or even necessarily a mimetic tradition’ (p. 54-5) but rather reveals a concern with spectacle and immoral display including Miracula, ludi inhonesti and Somergames. In short, the term theatrum worked as a stigmatising term because its definition was broad enough to draw associations with a wide range of contemporary activities. 174 Reviews Parergon 20.2 (2003) Chapter Three shifts focus onto different types of sanctioned theatrical practice in late medieval England. True to his promise, the author places these developments in the context of ‘communities’. What becomes clear are the differences in, for example, lay and clerical practice, as well as what we might expect to see in different locations such as monasteries and Cathedral towns, as opposed to towns and parishes in which civic authority was more immediately in the hands of secular guilds. Chapter Four continues the emphasis on dramatic communities such as York, Newcastle, Beverly, Chester and East Anglia. Of importance here is Clopper’s argument that, while church authorities were eager to restrict drama to the enactment of biblical narratives, it was ‘the clergy’s inability to completely control lay activities that allowed an opening for dramatisation of vernacular biblical texts’ (p. 140). The result of which was the emergence, in lay communities, of instructional moral drama that was religious in content but not necessarily biblical. Clopper’s emphasis on communities is sustained by casting the cycle plays and other religious dramas in a civic context, arguing that drama progressed ‘from the church into the streets’ in different forms and at different times, depending on the kind of local government (p. 140). In medieval Lincoln and Norwich biblical stories constituted the bulk of dramatic narratives due to the predominance of the Cathedral over public activities. Meanwhile in other towns like Newcastle, Clopper identifies a much earlier emergence of moral, instructional drama presented by lay people. The chapter concludes with an excellent subsection on London, addressing the comparative lack of medieval drama produced therein. The important point is made that, due largely to the presence of the court nearby and its associated traditions of spectacular...

Is the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge a Lollard Tract against Devotional Drama?

“Is the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge a Lollard Tract against Devotional Drama?” The essay argues that the Tretise is neither a Lollard text nor one that attacks devotional drama (biblical plays or liturgical representationes). The essay opens with a list of reasons terminological, dialectal, regional, and historical—for being skeptical that the Tretise is a Lollard tract or an attack on the devotional drama. There is a more detailed discussion of terminology “miraclis pleyinge,” theatrica, and related terms—before turning to the manuscript context of the Tretise. The arguments for Lollard authorship and ideology of the text that have been presented by Nicholas Davis and Ruth Nissé are critiqued. The analysis suggests that the writer of the tract was using a Dominican preaching manual for the construction of the argument and that the Tretise is directed against ludic indiscretions similar to those condemned by Innocent III, English synods, and English bishops. John Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium contains graphic descriptions of the kinds of activities the Tretise is probably talking about. The essay concludes that BL Additional 24202 is a commonplace book put together by a secular cleric, possibly a parish priest, who used a Dominican preaching manual to guide him in writing not only the Tretise but also the tract on dicing and related anti-ludic items. These texts promote the same penitential attitude towards play that are found in Dominican as opposed to Franciscan texts.

Drama in Sermons: Quotation, Performativity, and Conversion in a Middle English Sermon on the Prodigal Son and in A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge

ment, the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge (ca. 1380-1425), is also its fullest expression of dramatic theory.' Though it finds nothing redeeming in theater, rejecting it as ineffectual and blasphemous while extolling preaching instead, the Tretise is itself a theory of the theater that quotes and disputes another theory of the theatermaking it an antagonistic dialogue of theories. The fact that the Tretise has two distinct authors, one providing a continuation to the other's text, further compounds its dialogic character. In this sense, the Tretise employs drama's constituent linguistic form in order to

‘The Precious Body of Christ That They Tretyn in Ther Hondis’: ‘Miraclis Pleyinge’ and the <em>Croxton Play of the Sacrament </em>

In the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge , Christ's Passion, despite its fortunate result for humanity, emerges as the ultimate, condemning result of humans assuming an irreverent access to the divine--an irreverent access (resulting, in this case, in the torture of divine flesh at human hands) that both writers of the text describe as a chief characteristic of 'miraclis pleyinge.' Similarly, in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament , cursory treatment of Christian doctrines, disregard for Church leaders, and assumed access to the divine--embodied in the sacred object of the host--result in a bloody version of Christ's Passion, marked by human mishandling of sacred objects and topics. Offered in this paper as a point of comparison to the issues raised in the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge , the Croxton Play of the Sacrament stages and illuminates a number of the chief points of the Tretise writers. Carefully shepherded and controlled by Church representatives who invoke the very doctrines and embody the very structure that the writers of the Tretise see as threatened or undermined by 'miraclis pleyinge,' what seems an irreverent reenactment of the Passion becomes in the Croxton Play an opportunity for redemption. What the writers of the Tretise see as the dangerous precedent of 'miraclis pleyinge'—inappropriate human engagement of sacred objects and topics--the Croxton Play embraces as potential site for indulging spiritual desires and exploring religious belief, while reassuringly asserting the fundamental stability and authority of Christianity.

Sacred Blood and the Late Medieval Stage

Sacred Blood and the Late Medieval Stage Clifford Davidson The Wycliffite Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge alleges that the late medieval religious stage, specifically "miraclis pleyinge," is a vehicle by which audiences see "veine sightis of degyse."1 While this allegation reflects the opinion of a hostile witness, the terms that he uses serve to identify precisely the visual nature of the late medieval religious drama. To be sure, the writer in his polemic mixes secular entertainment with sacred drama and thus is able to insist upon the ability of such theatrical spectacle to stir "to leccherie and debatís" and to other vices.2 'Degyse,' referring to costumes, masks, and other aspects of disguise taken on by actors, and 'sightis' are both terms which confirm Pamela Sheingorn 's insistence on medieval drama as essentially one of the visual arts of the Middle Ages.3 The terms also seem to be consistent with Graham Runnalls' argument, referring to the great French mystery plays, that "the medieval theatre was a place where the spectacle was considered to be more important than the text."4 In contrast to the early medieval rejection of verisimilitude and specific detail in the depiction of religious scenes, late medieval art and drama tended to be both very precise and realistic in the representation of the Passion and the martyrdom of saints.5 The spectacle, because it has not been preserved for us except in descriptions in texts, stage directions, and theatrical records, is of primary concern for investigation at the same time that it is most elusive. One of the primary hermeneutic problems in need of exploration in this drama therefore involves how we are to visualize the scenes presented on the medieval stage and how we are to understand their visual dimension. While the study of fixed pictures and sculpture—e.g., wall paintings, stained glass, alabaster carvings—may illuminate this study, the late medieval stage must not be understood as static. It is clear that the effects produced by the producers and actors of the vernacular 436 Clifford Davidson437 religious drama would hardly have been rigidly presented or lifeless. Indeed, all the evidence seems to point to decidedly effective theatrical presentation, designed often, as is consistent with the insistence on identification with the Passion of Christ and with the popular appeal of veneration of martyr saints, to bring the individual viewer to an emotional response to the events being depicted.6 The audience response to religious drama in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries would be difficult if not impossible to replicate today. While the encouragement of strong identification with the suffering Christ in plays of the Passion resulted in the presentation of a character who would appear to be beaten until wounded from his head to his feet, the response of a modern audience to such a realistic scene is likely to be one of revulsion rather than sympathy at the sight of blood that is represented as Christ's. A recent incident in a parade in a small American town may serve to verify this point. According to an Associated Press story, a local church sponsored "a bloody Jesus wearing a bloodstained robe dragging a cross before whip-wielding Roman soldiers " in the Railroad Days parade at Durand, Michigan. Complaints were registered with the parade committee, and it was emphatically decided that "This type of parade entry will not be permitted in our future . . . parades."7 The scene of a wounded Christ carrying the cross was seen as offensive, and certainly was not viewed as conducive to devotion by the spectators who saw it and complained. The stage blood and the torturers were apparently seen as inappropriate violence, hardly reflecting the sacrificial act of a Savior whose blood thus is to be apprehended as ritually pure.8 In contrast, late medieval spirituality accepted Christ's blood as pure because of his sinlessness. Joseph of Arimathea thus exclaims concerning the Crucifixion in the Bodley Burial ofChrist: O innocent bloode, Most of vertue, most graciose and gude, This day stremyt owt lik a floode. . . . (24-26)9 In this scene the Virgin Mary is unable to touch her Son because the cross is "so high...

The Medieval Stage and the Antitheatrical Prejudice

THE MEDIEVAL STAGE AND THE ANTITHEATRICAL PREJUDICE So sithen thise miraclis pleyinge ben onely singnis, . . . they ben not onely contrarious to the worschipe of God—that is, bothe in signe and in dede—but also they ben ginnys of the devvel to cacchen men to byleve of Anticrist.—A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge Condemnation of actors and of the ludic experience as represented in the Wycliffite Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge was not confined only to the radical fringe of Christianity in the late Middle Ages, but rather involved an attitude that was inherited from certain of the Church Fathers and that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries would emerge in the distaste of the theatre evidenced by such Puritans as Phillip Stubbes, William Perkins, and William Prynne.2 The Tretise is, to be sure, an extreme example of antagonism to the stage, and it would be easy to misread its significance as a theatre history document. But the Tretise nevertheless suggests the importance of surveying the matter of medieval hostility to actors and the stage. It will be useful initially to call to mind the fact that a range of dramatic traditions, from dignified and stylized religious ceremony to rowdy secular entertainment, coexisted throughout the period. S o m e of the texts that are studied by students of the drama—e.g., the Visitatio Sepulchri in its simplest 1 A Tretise ofMiraclis Pleyinge, ed. Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Ser., 19 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993), p. 99. 2 Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie ofAbuses (London, 1583), sigs. Lvr -Miv ; William Prynne, Histrio-mastix (London, 1633), passim. It will, however, be important to recognize that there was considerable variation in attitude toward the stage among Puritans; not all were entirely hostile, nor was all antagonism to the theater lodged in the Puritan camp. See Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980), esp. pp. 18-47. William Perkins, no friend of the theater, was perhaps typical in most disliking religious plays, which, like religious processions and the Roman Catholic Mass itself, are 'vtterly forbidden' {The Workes [London, 1612], 1,17). For Prynne, plays for the stage are 'the very product of Satan, and the broode of Hell' and players 'are the very dregs of men' guilty of every offense including sodomy (Histrio-mastix, pp. 16,133,135). P A R E R G O N ns 14.2 (January 1997) 2 Clifford Davidson liturgical form3 —must be distinguished from the more representational forms, and yet in no sense should the earliest Easter dramas be seen as a step historically on the way to theatrical experiences that would raise the ire of critics from Robert Grosseteste to Prynne. Unfortunately, popular accounts of the medieval stage continue to describe how it evolved out of the liturgy following the total demise of the theatre of antiquity—a theatre which is said to have been suppressed by humorless churchmen—whereupon the acceptance of drama is said to have grown gradually as new forms developed in the church and then moved out first to the church porch and eventually to the streets.4 According to this older view, the medieval actor reclaimed his place in society through a development that took a thousand years to germinate. Unfortunately, the attitude toward the actor and the theatre in the years prior to the Reformation was never so simple. A generation ago O. B. Hardison, Jr., demonstrated that the simplistic evolutionary model fails to fit the historical facts.5 While the theatre as the ancient Romans knew it was indeed suppressed following a period of decadence, the offering of entertainments by actors, either one-person entertainers or small troupes, appears to have had a continuous history in Western Europe through the time of the High Middle Ages. Verification comes from various sources, including, most recently, the texts of the Nordic sagas and related documents which report the popularity of the leikarar, w h o were admired and w h o yet existed on the margins of Scandinavian society.6 Such entertainers, though often rewarded with rich gifts of clothing which they might...

A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge ed. by Clifford Davidson

REVIEWS sion is the kind of social system that Crane might have engaged in her attempts to connect romances to their extraliterary cultures; confessional scenes, needless to say, are not unknown in the texts she writes about. The last chapter, on adventure, hazard, and gain, could have made better use of Michael Nerilch's wonderfully suggestive book, Ideology ofAdventure, and his comparisons between knightly and mercantile exploits. Crane's book is one I will look forward to rereading with students. It is compact, intelligent, well written, and informative. Some of Crane's inter­ pretations will strike readers as extreme or partial, but the merits of new books on Chaucer (which are thick on the ground) are not, in my view, new interpretations alone but rather new ways of reading texts against sharply defined theoretical concerns richly illustrated, in the first instance, by text and language. Even if one disputes the conclusion, one can learn from the process by which it was reached. On this count Crane's book is highly successful. Another possible merit of a new book on Chaucer is its view of other books on Chaucer. I was disappointed that Hansen took so little notice of Carolyn Dinshaw's Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989) and that Crane takes so little notice of Hansen's or Dinshaw's work (are the publication dates really too close to permit fuller consideration?). Crane is extremely accommodating ofother readers, even those whose work she plainly contra­ dicts; Hansen's chief opponent seems to be herself as a critic in earlier stages. It would be very helpful to have a clear sense of the differences among these and other authors; surely feminist discourse on Chaucer can tolerate some explicit interfeminist debate and difference. Those divisions seem real to me, ifas yet largely unarticulated, and what is imaginary is the need to shield what is surely a predominant-if not the predominant­ strain ofChaucer criticism today from the displacements and tensions of its own complex agenda. Au.EN ). FRANTZEN Loyola University Chicago CLIFFORD DAVIDSON, ed. A Tretise ofMiraclis Pleyinge. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series, vol. 19. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval In­ stitute Publications, 1993. Pp. viii, 183. $36.00 cloth, $15.00 paper. This edition of the Middle English A Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge is a "re­ vised, corrected, and expanded" version of Davidson's earlier typescript 189 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER edition of the same work, A Middle English Treatise ofthe Playing ofMira­ cles (1981). Copied in an early-fifteenth-century manuscript containing other Wycliffite or Lollard tracts, the Tretise is actually comprised of two closely related prose pieces. Taken together, the two halves of the Tretise, 749 lines in the present edition, represent the earliest sustained criticism in English ofthe drama. Part 1 ofthe Tretise is clearly the more important, for in order to condemn "miraclis pleying," its author takes up arguments made by proponents of such plays in order to refute them. Consequently, this part of the Tretise provides a contemporary statement of the principles underlying the late-medieval religious dramas: they encourage the worship ofGod, they cause men and women to commit to moral living, they move the audience to compassion and devotion, they convert the recalcitrant who would otherwise not be swayed, they provide an acceptable recreation, and they provide a more memorable experience than painted representations. Part 2 of the Tretise, addressed to "a friend," further denounces "miraclis pleyinge" through a series of specious allegorical interpretations of biblical passages. Davidson's textual apparatus includes a thirty-page introduction, textual notes, and glossary. The introduction follows the organization and general view of the earlier edition. It provides a historical overview of the official attitudes to dramatic performances and to iconographic representation from the time of the early church fathers up until the development of the English civic cycles. Although Davidson acknowledges the now proverbial ambiguity of medieval dramatic nomenclature, in particular the word "miraclis," he argues that the Tretise condemns a "fairly broad range of dramatic representation ... , especially the playing of the Passion." Ac­ cordingly, the central argument of both parts of the Tretise is that actors who dramatically imitate holy lives and works hollowly play...

Plays as Play: A Medieval Ethical Theory of Performance and the Intellectual Context of the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge

"Plays as Play: A Medieval Ethical Theory of Performance and the Intellectual Context of the Tretire of Miraclis Pleyinge." Within the larger history of the medieval church's attitude toward drama and performance lies a distinct scholastic theory that conceives of performance in the context of an ethical approach to playing. The theory is developed within the medieval reception of the Nicomachean Ethics, principally through the treatment of the Aristotelian virtue of eutrapelia in the commentaries of Albert and Thomas, and also within more explicitly Christian distinctiones on play. The theory judges playing on the basis of moral rather than formal criteria and thus often mentions performance alongside non-dramatic kinds of play. Understanding this habit of mind allows one to see how the two parts of the Middle English Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge cohere, and it makes Lawrence M. Clopper's recent reinterpretation of "miracle" unnecessary in order to establish the work's unity. The theory also seems embedded in some of the cycle drama's reflexive references to play, particularly in the Towneley passion sequence.

Miracula and The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge

For over a century before the establishment of English vernacular religious drama in cities of the north, there was a concerted effort by the papacy and episcopacy to eradicate or rechannel lay and clerical ludi that struck the establishment as more conducive to lechery, gluttony, and the mocking of sacred things than to worshipful remembrance of Christ's sacrifice or to meditation on man's lamentable condition. However, legislating a distinction between appropriate and inappropriate ludi was not easy. When Innocent III sought to ban ludi theatrales among his clergy, his edict had to be glossed to assure religious communities that the pope did not oppose the decorous representation of certain topics the story of Rachel, the Three Kings, and Herod.1 Since some of these ludi took place within monastic and other religious houses, not all the participants thought them objectionable, but English bishops, particularly Grosseteste and Grandisson, tried to put down raucous and inappropriate ludi some of which they called miracula whether they occurred within religious houses or among the laity.2 By examining the few records we have of miracula and miracles in English documents, I should like to demonstrate that miracula are not, as we have supposed, vernacular religious dramas produced by lay people, towns, or guilds; nor are they saints' plays or the kind of liturgical repraesentationes best known in the editions of Karl Young. Rather, they are activities we have called pagan survivals or boy-bishop ceremonies or activities that parody the liturgy or make jest of sacred events. After an analysis of the activities prohibited under the name miracula, I shall discuss the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge and a relevant section in the Dives and Pauper. I believe these tracts are companion pieces which represent two views on appropriate kinds of ludi. Both justify amusements or playing by reference to David's dancing before the ark of the Lord; however, the two writers seem to disagree on what is acceptable. I do not believe that either tract is concerned with vernacular religious drama, nor do I believe the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge to be antitheatrical polemic.

Old and New Evidence of the Career of William Melton, O.F.M.

The preaching of William Melton in York in 1426 stands alongside the Wycliffite A Treatise of Miraclis Pleyinge as a rare instance in which drama was the subject of a medieval sermon.1 The text of the Wycliffite sermon tells us much about drama of the period, but we do not know the author. By contrast, though we do not have the text of Melton's sermon in York, we have some information about the preacher himself. Yet, scholars of English drama have frequently cited and drawn conclusions from Melton's preaching in York without considering what else is known about him.2 Indeed, I am not aware of any, single, published study which collates all known evidence. I will compare evidence from six sources, which I believe represents all available evidence on Melton. Five of these sources

The Antitheatrical Prejudice by Jonas Barish

REVIEWS Jonas Barish. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1981. Pp. 499. $24.50. This ambitious, extensively researched work is, in its outward form, a historical survey of writings against the theater—or, to be more precise, of writings addressed in some way to the phenomenon of theatricality and to the kinds of moral disquiet and (more rarely) moral optimism which it has shown itself capable of engendering. Although the greater part of the book deals specifically with the stage and associated polemic, this is merely the focus of a more general treatment of Western responses to “the theatrical” in art and behavior. Writers of the stature of Dickens and La Rochefoucauld therefore have as important a place in the study as single-minded campaigners like Prynne and the Reverend Arthur Bed­ ford. The book also gives detailed attention to Plato, Rousseau, and other influential figures whose attacks on the stage provide a way of access to a more general cast of thought. Its fourteen substantial chapters are organized on broadly chronological lines, their principal topics being Plato and Greece (I), Rome and Early Christianity (II), the fourteenthcentury Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge (III), Puritans and Renaissance humanists (IV), Ben Jonson (V ), Renaissance attitudes to display and self-display (VI), seventeenth-century France (VII), eighteenth-century England (VIII), Rousseau (IX), nineteenth-century suspicion (X) and equivocal affirmation (XI), Nietzsche (XII), the criticism of Yvor Win­ ters (XIII), and twentieth-century drama and society (XIV). This inventory does not, however, do justice to the book’s more stimulating qualities; it is at once something more and something less than the comprehensive map of an important tradition in Western thought. Professor Barish points out that his account is, of necessity, selective and somewhat personal, making “no pretense at being a systematic history” (p. 2). And the narrative intractability of the material commits the author to some extent to construction a tiroirs: themes and topics (for example, Renaissance images of Protean change, pp. 99-112) are gen­ erally allowed predominance over story; a number of provocative com­ parisons are drawn between the thought of different epochs (for example, in the diagnosis of antifeminism, or at least “anti-femininity,” as a recurrent strain in polemic against the theater). The book can usefully be approached via its index, as well as via its order of presentation. True to the challenging definite article in its title, the book sets out to display and analyze a single phenomenon, considered to retain the same essential qualities behind the surface variety of its self-manifesta­ tion across time. “The antitheatrical prejudice” is presented as a largely 381 382 Comparative Drama unreflective pattern of feeling which goes on seeking plausible alibis for its own existence; in the author’s words, “it is ‘ante-predicative,’ and seems to precede all attempts to explain or rationalize it” (p. 117). This seems acceptable as a narrative convenience: the reader is cued to expect, and for much of the work is given, a journey full of incidental discoveries towards a final goal which remains partly notional. It may also have some value as a proposition about a general malaise of Western thought. But it seems less useful as a principle of historical analysis. The book’s central thesis is, in fact, explicitly a-historical: The prejudice seems too deep-rooted, too widespread, too resistant to changes of place or time to be ascribed entirely, or even mainly, to social, political, or economic factors, (pp. 116-17) It is therefore not surprising that, allowing for necessary selectiveness, the work should only be partially successful as a history of attacks on the stage and the theatrical. The decision to draw mainly on written argu­ ment, and to assume some knowledge of theatrical and social conditions, is not necessarily a disadvantage: the work is probably at its most incisive as historical criticism where the language and concerns of thinkers and polemicists are shown to intersect with those of the dramatists (notably in the treatment of English Renaissance drama) and where authors are shown to have foregrounded, for their own moral and aesthetic purposes, a particular idea of the theatrical. Conversely, the less illuminating...