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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
Though The conversion of St. Paul and Mary Magdalene belong to the same genre and are in the same manuscript they illustrate the use of different dramaturgical devices. The former play is a processional drama being, sometimes, closely linked with religious ritual and then the audience is treated as congregation. The Poeta who begins and ends each part of the play called "station", directly addresses the audience inviting them to take part in the procession to reach the next place where the performance will continue. Thus he breaks the dramatic illusion and simultaneously links the life of the audience/congregation with the theatrical reality. The action of the play dealing mainly with one theme is simple. Mary Magdalene, on the other hand, was worked out on quite different principles, except for the use of comic effects. There is much less communication with the audience and the structure of the play is complex as there are subplots, various actions, journeys to and from distant places. Moreover, the playwright employs memory instead of enactment in an original way. It is when the crucifixion of Christ is only remembered and when it is recorded in a letter to the Roman emperor. Finally, more than one character in this play experience intense inner states, not rarely expressing their feelings by means of impressive imagery. Thus Mary Magdalene is artistically and technically a more developed play than is The conversion of St. Paul.
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The conversion of St. Paul and Mary Magdalen, appearing in the same manuscript, differ a great deal from each other. The former, written in the early 16th century (Davidson 1986: 98), is much shorter and simpler concerning the use of dramaturgical and theatrical devices, while the latter demonstrates a surprising development of the given dramatic genre in the late 15th century (Davidson 1986: 74). No wonder then that it has received more critical attention than The conversion of St. Paul. David Baker stresses that Mary Magdalen is "physically the most elaborate single play in the English religious drama" (1982: xlvi) and J. M. Manly already in 1927 writes about saints' plays in general, finding that they "were more important for the development of the drama in England than the great Scripture cycles" (Manly 1927: 133-153). The latest scholarly edition of the two plays (edited by Donald C. Baker), published for the EETS (1982), contains an excellent commentary on language, sources, and a survey of the critical views concerning textual problems as well as those relating to staging. Clifford Davidson's (ed.) most valuable book on The saint play in medieval Europe (1986) endeavours to give an overall view concerning saints' plays in Europe with regard to the links with plastic arts. Moreover, a certain amount of articles on saints' plays have appeared which shows a growing interest in that genre and in Mary Magdalen in particular. There are still, however, issues worth analysing. In this short study, I will venture to deal with chosen problems while discussing the two plays separately. Before analysing The conversion of St. Paul, however, it will be worth while, I think, by way of introduction, to briefly survey some of the views of scholars on the staging of the play in order to demonstrate how difficult it is to prove how the play was really staged in those times.
F. J. Furnivall stated in his edition of the play for the EETS (The Digby Plays, 1896) that it was put on in three different places according to the three parts of the play called "stations" (EMI: 105), a term used to define the stages of the passion of Christ on his way to Calvary, celebrated during Lent in the Catholic Church. This view was accepted by other scholars until the 70's of our century. In his article on "The staging of saint plays in England" (1972: 99-119) and later in the Introduction to his edition of the play, Glynne Wickham (1976: 105) finds that, as to his knowledge, he is the first to challenge that view. He contends that the play was performed in one "acting area", arguing that Furnivall misinterpreted the word "procession" which was used instead of "process" (argument) for rhyming purposes. Earlier, however, Mary del Villar found that the play was staged on a stationary stage, similar to that on which The castle of perseverance was put (LMRP: xxvi). But already in 1973, as Baker points out, Raymond Pentzell followed F. J. Furnivall's idea concerning processional staging (LMRP: xxviii). Finally, Clifford Davidson (1986: 99) concludes that "the play in fact combines processional movement with playing at stations and mansions or houses, with riding on horse-back...", but according to him to his mind the audience does not move (1986: 99). Although this approach to the problem, not being dissimilar to that of Glynne Wickham's, may seem convincing, I agree with Donald Baker that this must not have been always the case (LMRP: xxviii). Depending on the locale and the customs where the play was performed as well as the preferences of the person directing the play or the ones who helped to finance it, the performance could have taken place as Furnivall and, after him, Chambers and others saw it. At least one acting area could have been extended so that the audience would have to move anyway, at least from one mansion or scaffold, following Saul and the knights riding on horses from Jerusalem to the p lace where the conversion took place (LMRP: xxviii). In this way, the term station used in the play to divide it into three parts, would be justified in the sense that Paul's activity as a preacher, as Christ's disciple who is in danger of life, would be strongly linked by the audience with Christ's passion celebrated in a processional way at the Stations of the Cross (LMRP: xxviii).
1. The critics generally agree and Poeta, standing for the Prologue of each of the three parts of The conversion of St. Paul, stresses himself that the play is chiefly indebted to The Acts of the Apostles. Other sources have also been referred to: "the office for the feast of the conversion of St. Paul (25 January) and the feast in commemoration of St. Paul the Apostle (30 June)" as well as "Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend" (LMRP: xxii). Although I agree with Baker and Davidson that there is no evidence for the play's indebtedness to the earlier dramatic versions in Latin on the conversion of St. Paul, I...
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