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The Medieval ‘Cycle’ as History Play: an Approach to the Wakefield Plays1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

E. Catherine Dunn
E. Catherine Dunn*
Affiliation:
Catholic University of America
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Extract

One of the most vital questions in present studies of English drama is the nature and provenance of the Elizabethan chronicle play. At the mid-century of our era, it was quite clear that Felix Schelling's survey of the history play, now fifty years old, should be rewritten to include the discoveries of a half-century's scholarship. Such was the announced purpose of Professor Irving Ribner's book, which appeared in 1957 as The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare. The origins of this distinct kind of Elizabethan drama underwent a close scrutiny in the new book, especially in relationship to Renaissance nondramatic historiography and to the medieval morality play. I still think, however, that the problem of origins has not been settled.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 7 , 1960 , pp. 76 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960

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Footnotes

1

Read at the University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conference 25 April 1959.

References

1 Read at the University of Kentucky Foreign Language Conference 25 April 1959.

2 Schelling, Felix E., The English Chronicle Play (New York, 1902), pp. 3–6 Google Scholar; Tillyard, E. M. W., Shakespeare's History Plays (New York, 1946), p. 24 Google Scholar; Chambers, E. K., Shakespeare: a Survey (London, 1925), pp. 1–3 Google Scholar; Campbell, Lily B., Shakespeare's Histories: Mirror of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, 1947), pp. 8–17 Google Scholar; Rossiter, A. P., English Drama from Early Times to the Elizabethans (New York, 1950), pp. 119–128 Google Scholar; Ribner, Irving, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar, chapter 1, passim.

3 MacKinnon, Effie, ‘Notes on the Dramatic Structure of the York Cycle’, SP, XXVIII (1931), 433–449 Google Scholar. I have also read Miss MacKinnon's unpublished master's dissertation on which the article is based.

4 Ibid., pp. 434-436.

5 Haskins, Charles Homer, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), pp. 227–232 Google Scholar; DeGhellinck, J., s.j., L'Essor de la littérature latine au XIIe siècle (Bruxelles, 1946), II, 92 Google Scholar.

6 Tatlock, J. S. P., The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley, 1950), p. 426 Google Scholar.

7 Rev. Louis Bouyer indicates that the relationship between the church of the New Testament and the ‘people of God’ has been one of the most important subjects of study and writing among ecclesiologists in the past twenty years (Liturgical Piety, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1955, p. 23).

8 Rickaby, Joseph, s.j., St. Augustine's City of God: a View of its Contents (London, 1925), P. 47.Google Scholar

9 Étienne Gilson, ‘Foreword’ to St. Augustine’s City of God, tr. Demetrius Zema et al. (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950-1954), p. xlvi.

10 Daniélou, Jean, s.j., The Lord of History (London and Chicago, 1958), p. 7 Google Scholar. This eschatological view is also discussed by Bouyer, pp. 203 ff., under the term ‘Parousia’.

11 Augustine, XXII, 30. Augustine does not make a special cosmic ‘day’ for the exodus.

12 Daniélou, p. 106.

13 Gilson, , The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, tr. Downes, A. H. C. (New York, 1936), p. 482 Google Scholar,n. 3.

14 Poelman, Roger, ‘The Pilgrimage Theme in the Old Testament’, Lumen Vitae, XIII (1958), 198 Google Scholar.

15 Ribner, op. cit.,p. 18.

16 Father Daniélou's chapter, ‘The Song of the Vine’, pp. 168-182, deals with the scriptural theme of the vine planted by the Lord and disappointing Him with poor fruit. The chapter is concerned especially with Isaiah v. 1-6 and the 79th Psalm.

17 Craig LaDrière, J., ‘Classification, Literary’, Dictionary of World Literature, ed. Shipley, Joseph, 2d ed. (New York, 1953), pp. 62–64 Google Scholar.

18 See note I, above.

19 Coffman, G. R., ‘Plea for the Study of the Corpus Christi Plays as Dramatic Art’, SP, XXVI (1929), 416–417 Google Scholar.

20 The Towneley Plays, ed. George England and Alfred W. Pollard (London, 1897, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, LXXI).

21 I am indebted to one of my graduate students, Rev. Joseph Dowd, CM., for light on the importance of the covenants in the cycle plays.

22 The Towneley Plays, p. 7, 11, 192-193.

23 Ibid., editor's note, p. 9.

24 Ibid., p. 24, 11, 38-40.

25 Ibid., 11. 46-47.

26 Ibid., l. 91.

27 P. 28, 11. 177-181. (See Father Daniélou's observations on the covenant with Noah, pp. 17-18).

28 P. 40-41. 11. 1-48.

29 Pp. 41-42, 11. 49-56.

30 Op. cit., p. 198. St. Augustine speaks of the people of God as being in their adolescence from Abraham to David (XVI, 43).

31 The Towneley Plays, p. 56, 1. 1.

32 Ibid., p. 57, l. 18.

33 Ibid., p. 68, 11. 126-131.

34 MacKinnon, pp. 439-440.

35 The Towneley Plays, p. 68, 11. 136-137.

36 Ibid., p. 87, 11. 41-46.

37 Daniélou, pp. 204 ff.

38 Speirs, John, in Medieval English Poetry: the Non-Chaucerian Tradition (London, 1957)Google Scholar, speaks of the ‘harrowing of Hell’ in Wakefield as stealing the thunder from the resurrection play (p. 361).

39 See Young's, Karl study of the theme, The Drama of the Medieval Church (Oxford, 1933), 1, 149 Google Scholar ff

40 The deliverance of souls, 1. 193. (Emphasis mine.)

41 LI. 205-206.

42 Poelman.p. 198.

43 Hamilton Thompson, A., The Cathedral Churches of England (London, 1925), p. 20 Google Scholar.

44 Smith, R. A. L., Canterbury Cathedral Priory (Cambridge, 1943), p. 38 Google Scholar. James, M. R., in The Ancient Libraries of Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge, 1903), p. xci Google Scholar, gives evidence that the precentor was normally the librarian at St. Martin's Priory in Dover.

45 Cohen, Gustav, Histoire de la mise en scène dans le théatre religieux français du moyen âge, 2d ed. (Paris, 1951), p. 34 Google Scholar.

46 Graham, R., “The Intellectual Influence of English Monasteries between the Tenth and the Twelfth Centuries’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series, XVII (1903), 55.Google Scholar

47 Knowles, Dom David, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1948), I, 291–292 Google Scholar.

48 Wilson, R. M., Early Middle English Literature, 2d ed. (London, 1951), p. 33 Google Scholar; Vaughan, Richard, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), p. 34 Google Scholar.

49 Chambers, E. K., The Medieval Stage (Oxford, 1903), II, 97 Google Scholar.

50 Frank, Grace, The Medieval French Drama (Oxford, 1954), p. 173 Google Scholar.

51 Salter, F. M., Medieval Drama in Chester (Toronto, 1955), p. 111 Google Scholar.

52 John Speirs, pp. 307-375. The chapter originally appeared as an article in Scrutiny, XVIII (1951-1952).

53 Rossiter, pp. 127-128.

54 Ribner, pp. 37-40.

55 Rossiter (p. 119) says that Bale, who had been a Catholic and a Carmelite, was a paid propagandist for Cromwell.

56 Craig, Hardin, English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar, chapter x, ‘The Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Medieval Religious Drama’.

57 LI. 1106-1112 (in Manly's, John M. Specimens of the Pre-Shakspcrean Drama, Boston, 1903, vol. 1 Google Scholar). The reference to ‘our late Kynge Henrye’ could hardly have been in the 1538 version.

58 A separate article is in order for a detailed study of Bale's work and of the gradual development I am postulating. Here I wish merely to draw the lines for my further investigation.