Marriage in late-medieval German Easter and Shrovetide plays.

Publication: Comparative Drama

Publication Date: 22-MAR-06

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The topics of love, marriage, sexuality, and the family in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance have attracted tremendous interest for some time now because we have realized how much the relationship between genders proves important for the well-being of any society. (1) By the same token, these topics have almost always been the object of intense debates in theology, law, the arts, and especially in literature. (2) In fact, one of the key functions of fictional texts has been to serve as a public medium to negotiate the most critical issues affecting practically every member of a community, especially in matters difficult to solve by means of laws and governmental rulings, the teachings of the Church, and other authorities. This function finds powerful expression in numerous late-medieval plays, which present marriage either as an object of satire or as a model of ideal behavior relevant for their urban audiences.

Of course, the emotional aspect of these matters, particularly as they affect the lives of men and women, requires constant re-examination, an enterprise for which literary discourse appears to be the ideal forum. (3) After all, love is a most elusive phenomenon, affecting most people at some point in their lives more or less intensively, and marriage adds an additional level of complexity to this issue, as poets and others through the ages have confirmed. But who would dare to offer a precise, generally acceptable definition, unless we foolishly trust medieval satirists such as Andreas Capellanus (c.1190), Matfre Ermengaud (c.1288), or Juan Ruiz (c.1340) in their claims mostly formulated tongue-in-cheek to have dealt with the topic exhaustively. (4) The critical studies on marriage and the gender relationships in past and present are legion. (5) Considering the relevance of marriage in the history of mentality, we can trace this broad discourse as far back as the Middle Ages (and even earlier) when poets, theologians, artists, philosophers, and jurists began to engage in a public debate at least since the twelfth century, though among theologians, the debate on various approaches, values, ideals, problems, and concerns involving love and marriage goes back much further. (6) Some of the most popular genres that lent themselves particularly well to this discourse were sermons, prose novels, secular song books, marriage treatises, verse novellas, and exempla. (7) As to be expected, many of these have been studied in great detail and need not be revisited here, especially if we think of Elisabeth Waghall Nivre's impressive Women and Family Life in Early Modern German Literature (2004). She correctly emphasizes that "all texts investigated move within at least three different discursive fields inherent in a larger gender discourse: sexuality, marriage, and family life." (8) But to probe the discourse on marriage even further, I would like to focus here on late-medieval plays, both religious and secular. Such an approach is possible and makes perfect sense particularly in relation to Easter plays and Shrovetide plays which tended to include highly humorous scenes for comic release, drawing their essential material from everyday experiences and the basic conditions of human emotions?

Surprisingly, neither drama specialists nor social historians have adequately examined late-medieval plays as ideal objects to study how marriage was presented, evaluated, and discussed in public during that time, although stage performances essentially thrive on the intricate interaction with their audiences, either on a reflective or on a prescriptive level, which Manfred Pfister has called the "multimediality" of theater. (10) Many scholars of medieval plays have convincingly demonstrated that "the medieval theatre was above all a collective undertaking through which urban social groups and the urban elites in particular gave expression to what may properly be termed a bourgeois ideology." (11) But the performance itself is not an isolated event and does not exclude subsequent discussions and explorations of the issues presented on the stage, especially not within the framework of late-medieval urban communities.

Christmas and Easter plays, Passion and Morality plays, Shrovetide and Reformation plays experienced a tremendous proliferation during the fifteenth century and often included several hundred actors who performed for days, if not weeks. The genre itself has been studied for a long time, which makes it unnecessary to offer another general introduction. As Thomas Cramer informs us in his history of late-medieval German literature (1990), we know of approximately two hundred religious plays produced between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century, whereas many others seem to have been lost. (12) Usually the religious plays focused on major church holidays, but many times special episodes or sequences were isolated and utilized as themes for the plays. A number of plays are based on biblical narratives, and others present the devastating impact of the devil's influence on people's thoughts and behavior. The veneration of the Virgin Mary also proved to be a highly popular theme, as were the lives of martyrs and saints of the early Church. In the sixteenth century, morality plays gained in popularity, presenting the consequences of immorality and sinfulness for human salvation. (13) With respect to the Easter plays, scholarship has examined the structural elements, comic features, the satire of the various social classes, the depiction of the devil, the role of Mary Magdalen, and various aspects of staging, whereas the discourse of marriage itself in a variety of dramatic genres has not yet attracted any noteworthy attention. (14)

A vast majority of late-medieval plays were performed by lay actors for a lay audience, and were usually presented in the urban centers. (15) As unsophisticated as some of these plays might seem to the nonexpert today, they obviously exerted a tremendous influence on their audiences and found a wide following. Erika Fischer-Lichte observes, for instance, "The religious play of the late Middle Ages developed into an opportunity for people to display a form of piety that was steeped in the belief in magic.... The immense popularity of the religious play, particularly the Passion Play, among the urban European population continued unbroken throughout the sixteenth century." (16) Religious and secular plays reflected both values and ideals propagated by the authorities and the Church, but they also mirrored mental structures, popular culture, and commonly shared feelings. (17) The performance itself thus emerged as a powerful vehicle to explore the validity of public values and to reconfirm the basic standards of behavior required for peaceful cohabitation in the growing cities of the early modern world. (18)

Concurring with Jutta Eming's recent analysis of violence in late-medieval drama, I would like to suggest, by analogy, that many times the stage performance made possible an "Auseinandersetzung mit Autoritat ... in der die Rezipienten Positionen zwischen Ermachtigung und Unterwerfung, Uberlegenheit und Entlastung beziehen und von Angst zu Ehrfurcht, compassio und Lust an der Grausamkeit ambivalente Emotionen erfahren konnen" (interaction with authority ... in which the observers can choose positions between empowerment and subjugation, superiority and freedom from guilt, and can experience ambivalent emotions concerning fear, admiration, compassio, and delight in cruelty). (19) This ambivalence regarding specific precepts, norms, and ideals can also be observed with respect to gender relationships, specifically marriage. Unfortunately, drama scholarship has mostly ignored this aspect and has generally concentrated on issues such as religious messages, iconography, dramatic structures, character development, anti-Judaism, corporeality, visualization of the transcendental on the stage, the teaching of morality, farce, gestures, and features of entertainment. (20)

Depending on the subject matter, individual plays shed more or less light on marriage and gender relationships. When the religious topic focuses primarily on Christ's Passion or his resurrection, the conjugal relationship, as often exemplified by marginal figures, is irrelevant. Notably, whenever the playwright demonstrates an interest in developing more comical scenes and in incorporating marginal figures, suddenly marital couples enter the stage and assume either satirical roles or reflect ideals of conjugal relationships--scenes that probably appealed to the cruder interests of the urban secular audience. In the Innsbrucker (Thuringisches) Osterspiel (recorded in 1391), for instance, first the merchant, who also serves as a quack-doctor, and then his wife play major roles, although the selling of the ointment can only be identified as secondary to the miraculous account of Christ's resurrection acted out on the stage. (21)

As soon as the merchant has announced the cheap prices for his products, his wife comes forward and bitterly complains about his poor understanding of the business: "wy macht ir vns so wolveyle, / daz vns kost so manche marck?" (1002-3; how can you sell so cheaply that cost us so much?). First he tries to brush her off and even beats her, but she does not simply submit under his patriarchal rule; rather, she vehemently protests against her mistreatment. She protests, above all, that he sells his wares too cheaply and by sharing too little of his money with her: "wolt ir dar vm wesen karck?" (1004; do you intend to be miserly for that reason?). The merchant obviously does not know how to rationalize his decision and feels so insecure that he resorts to violence, not realizing that this makes his case even worse, since now she loudly accuses him of being ignorant and foolish, and actually puts this blame on all men: "iz ist dez tufels mynne, / daz dy alden man begynnen!" (1011-12; it is the devil's lust that drives old men in their actions). (22) Only now does the merchant explain why he sold his ointment at such a low price, emphasizing that it would be inappropriate to prevent customers from getting the best use from the merchandise ("daz ir sy hindert an yrem fromen!" [1016]; perhaps best translated as: that you prevent them from their good intentions). However, his violence has not muted the wife, who next resorts to bitter sarcasm in ridiculing her husband. The merchant's servant, Rubin, even comes to her defense and accuses his master of having forgotten to uphold his honor, which he damaged by beating his wife in public: "daz ir habit myne [frawen] geschlan / vor aller werlde vffentlich" (1024-25;...

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