THE SECOND SHEPHERD’S PLAY
THE MYSTERY PLAYS (SOURCES, THEMES, CYCLES) – GENERIC FEATURES
(different name used interchangeably – MIRACLE PLAY)
Vernacular drama of the Middle Ages. It developed from the liturgical drama and usually represented a biblical subject. In the 13th century, craft guilds began producing mystery plays at sites removed from the church, adding apocryphal and satirical elements to the dramas. In England groups of 25 – 50 plays were later organized into lengthy cycles, such as the Chester plays and the Wakefield plays. In England the plays were often performed on moveable pageant wagons, while in France and Italy they were acted on stages with scenery representing heaven, earth, and hell. Technical flourishes such as flying angels and fire-spouting devils kept the spectators' attention. The genre of the mystery play declined by 1600
Mystery plays:
· based on biblical stories,
· presented and composed in cycles:
o It’s a part of the Wakefield cycle(cykl, seria), the second Nativity play within the cycle. These CYCLES ran from Creation to Revelation
o Particular cycles can contain as many as 48 plays
o Each play is devoted to one discrete event (from the Old or New Testament)
o All the stages were on movable platforms e.g.: on wagons – it could be played simultaneously. It was possible to see all the play during one day
· Chronology was of little importance – you could watch first the Nativity (narodzenie) of Jesus and then Genesis
· Presented by trade guild (stowarzyszenie) members (e.g. carpenters). Each trade guild was responsible for a different story
· Typical cycle would began in such a way: Creation, the Fall of Man, the most significant elements of the Old Testament (e.g. the Flood, Abraham’s Covenant), the Nativity, Christ’s life, Crucification, Hell, the Last Judgement
·
· Sometimes deals with lives of Saints
· Based on religious symbols (unlike morality plays which are based on allegory)
· Fantastic elements e.g. Shepherds from Middle Times witness the birth of Jesus, a bunch of cherries in winter, a shift from winter to summer
ELEMENTS OF RITUAL:
Transubstantiation (przeistoczenie, Relig transsubstancjacja)
re-enactment (odtworzenie) of Christ’s offering this is the basic, the most important Christian ritual.
The transformation of the sheep into the child symbolizes transubstantiation.
Gill suggest that the sheep transformed into the child just as Christ
TRANSFORMATION AND COMMUNION:
· The transformation of the baby into the sheep (later there will be more details about it)
· The transformation from the old man to the new one (Mak is forgiven for his theft. Covering him with a blanket symbolizes his death and his transformation from the old man into the new one).
· Communion: There is a sacrifice in Church, during eucharist – the bread and the wine is transformed into the blood and body of Christ, symbolic turning the wafer/bread into Christ’s body and wine into his blood. (transubstantiation). Gill (Mak’s wife) says: I will eat this body
TRANSFORMATION OF PARALLEL MOTIFS:
· mock communion and the birth of Christ (it happened before the play – and now we have the parallel to the event (Crucification))
· oppression (ucisk) – the Shepherds suffer and the gifts are the parallels to their suffering
COMPLAINS INTO GIFTS
As a sort of reward for Christian behavious – forgiveness, Angel announces that Christ has been born – they (shepherds and probably Mak and his wife) visit baby Christ
They give Christ gifts: they make gifts of what troubles them – the gifts are the reverse (odwrotność) of their problems.
(At the beginning of the play the 3 shepherds complained about different things e.g. social situation, injustice, hierarchy in society, high taxes, weather, etc.)
· Bunch of cherries – red cherries symbolize blood – Christ’s passion and death.
Coll who gives it suffers from hunger
· Bird – bird can fly so it symbolizes freedom
Gib who gives it complained about being oppressed (uciskany ciemiężony, udręczony)
He give the bird to Christ so that he could be free
· Ball – it might be a symbol of world or royal power because the shape of it resembles apple of power.
· Daw who gives it complained about having no time and rest so he gives the child the ball with words: have a ball and play tennis (element of fun)
GRACE – PROMISE OF SALVATON:
Christ offered his life for humanity
(I won’t enlarge on this topic – I presume it is obvious)
ARCHETYPAL ELEMENTS
Archetype is an original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior
· The Sheep - Christ
· the Three Wise Men, the Magi - shepherds
· Archetypial time
Action: Past and present actions merge. Palestine/Wakefield.The main action will be the divine intervention into the unhappy world: historically, this happened only once, back in Palestine 1300 years before; but, doctrinally, it recurs throughout a Christian life. So the action, alternating between Palestine and Wakefield, involves two concepts of time, the archetypal and the ever-contemporary.
RENEWAL (odnowienie)
I think is about the renewal of Mak, his transformation (it is described somewhere in this work)
VEGETATION MYTHS
It’s Near Eastern myths. They have their vegetation gods. The gods were connected with nature. It is connected with the birth and death – a myth of Demeter is an example of vegetation myth.
I think the connection is that in The Second Shepherds’ Play we have also elements of birth and death
FERTILITY
1. (of land) żyzność f; (of human, animal) płodność f
2. fig (of mind, imagination) płodność f
I leave it for your imagination
SACRED- PROFANE: FARCE AND ADORATION
Profane – świecki
Farce – farsa (theatre concept)
· The comic perspective appear – we can consider the events as a mockery –
the transformation or the symbolism so it is hard to estimate if some elements are sacred or profane
· The play portrays the adoration of Jesus by the shepherds. It is noteworthy for its introduction, a dramatically astute burlesque (sprytna parodia)about a sheep stealer.
TENSION BETWEEN THEATRICALITY AND RITUAL AS THE REAL THING
MAK – ROLE PLAYING, DISGUISE:
· Mak pretends to be sb else, he is disguised (dressed in a cloak) because he doesn’t want to be recognize (Mak steals the sheep from the shepherds - He doesn’t want to be recognized. Shepherds (Coll and Gib—and Daw (a boy who works for them)) are not fooled and recognize him and they are afraid of having the sheep stolen and that’s why they force him to sleep between them)
· Mak casts the spell on them making them sleep and steals the sheep
· He takes the sheep to his home, to his wife, Gill
· To cover the crime, they put the sheep into the cradle and pretend it is a child – they know that the shepherds will look for it
· The shepherds come and want to see the baby (Mak told them before that he had a dream where his wide was giving a birth)
· They discover who the child is – Gill tells a story that the child was transformed into the sheep by elf
· Mak is punished for stealing the sheep. Instead of killing him shepherds show mercy and they toss him in a blanket (a kind of mock death). He apologizes – they forgive him. His ‘death’ symbolizes transformation from the old man to the new one. The forgiveness purifies him of his previous sins and he becomes a new man
LOCAL COLOUR AND UNIVERSITY
I think it is connected with the author of the play – the master of Wakefield (a town in England)
No sources….
REALISM AND SYMBOLISM
Realism:
· maybe sth connected with forgiveness. I think there is no realism in this play because the event takes place after the birth of Jesus but still there is a description of it as it happens now
Symbols :
· Gifts (the bunch of cherries, the bird, the ball)
· Transubstantiation
· Transformation
· The sheep symbolizes Christ
Everything is described in detail before
TIMELESSNESS AND LACK OF SPIRITUAL CONSTRAINS
· The time as well as the setting is universal just as Christ’s offering. Space and time is not important in a ritual
· Chronology is also not important (that’s why we have cycles)
· The movement from death to life (Mak’s story described earlier), from winter to summer, from pagan god to Christian God is represented in the play
SUMMARY: (IT’S DETAILD ONE)
This mystery play is a part of the Wakefield cycle, the second Nativity play within the cycle. These CYCLES ran from Creation to Revelation. They were created to teach, in a lively and realistic fashion, to largely illiterate peasant audiences, the Mysteries of the Christian faith. Descended from the liturgical Tropes that were spontaneously, and later deliberately, added to the celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass on various feast days throughout the year, which depicted events from the Bible and even, occasionally, Saints'' Lives, as celebrated by the Church. They encouraged saintliness in even the rudest companions of Christ''s Faith and eventually blossomed into the Morality Plays (of which EVERYMAN is such a blessed, and germinal, example). As the play opens, a shepherd is bemoaning his situation, and the social situation he sees as its cause--the lords take everything and the poor must suffer it. A second shepherd comes in and bemoans the state of marriage as a gift of misery for life. Then they see and greet each other, and a third shepherd joins them, who bemoans the floods and weather. They talk of food and sheep, and MAK appears. He is a thief, and the shepherds needing to sleep, but fearing he will despoil their flocks, make him to lie down among them. While they are sleeping, he gets up, cast spells of sleep and blindness on them, and steals a sheep. Then home he goes. His wife is afraid he''ll hang, but she comes up with the idea of putting the sheep in a cradle, pretending it''s a newborn child she''s just delivered. Mak goes back and slips in among the others, and pretends to be just waking up. They have dreams of him stealing; he provides a false dream, gets up and goes home. They follow when they find one of their sheep missing, and Mak''s little scheme falls apart when the shepherds go to look at the baby and find their ewe lamb. They take him out and bounce him up and down, screaming, between two pieces of canvas (instead of hanging him, as the first shepherd would''ve done), before they let him go. When the three shepherds return to the moors, the Angel appears to tell them of Jesus''s birth in Bethlehem. They try to sing the song the angel sang, but cannot get it right. They argue back and forth for a few minutes, and then go to see the newborn Divine Child--shown first to lonely and lowly men like themselves, as the prophets had foretold. They joyfully give the tiny one little gifts, as they have, and go singing joyfully into the night. The more one reads this play, the deeper and more complicated it appears to be. There is a tremendous amount of social contemporaneous commentary. The spiritual level deepens also, as the shepherds show mercy and so is shown the coming of the Christ Child, after an angelic apearance (which arouses in them a desire to sing, a desire fulfilled only after they have seen THE CHILD. This is symbolic of the desire for heavenly experience, and their salvation, after encountering Jesus and his mother.) It is interesting that the scene at Mak''s house is both a false birthing and a foreshadowing--a foreshadowing, since Jesus is called the Lamb of God--as even in their evildoing and unknowing, they point forward to Christ and his birth in Bethlehem. It is also sad, but intriguing, that Mak''s evildoing deprived him of the right to see Jesus, as would have happened had he stayed faithful and not stolen the sheep.
Ylayda