Labancamy Jankins 1
The Transgressive and Carnivalesque in Medieval English Drama:
the York Cycle
Plays, fairs, festivals and the marketplace “were interchangeable as safety valves”1 within
medieval English society, according to Peter Stallybrass and Allon White in The Politics and
Poetics of Transgression. Like the marketplace, medieval mystery plays, such as those
represented by the York Corpus Christi plays, served as the “epitome of local identity and the
unsettling of that identity by the trade and traffic of goods.”2 Within the mystery plays (and the
festival and procession which accompanied them), “we discover a commingling of categories
usually kept separate and opposed: center and periphery, inside and outside, stranger and local,
commerce and festivity, high and low.”3 Within such a hybrid setting, only hybrid notions and
understandings are appropriate. Actions considered transgressive thrive in such a setting. The
functions that transgressive actions perform in the mystery plays “are ultimately based on the
moral significance accorded”4 to the actions in medieval society. The drama of the mystery plays
“not only reflects that significance, but exploits it as the foundation of important dramatic
devices and conventions which dramatists in turn adapted in the service of entertainment, sociopolitical comment, and religious instruction.”5 In this essay I wish to explore the role of
transgressive actions, such as speech and behavior, within plays of the York Corpus Christi
cycle, and their function related to the carnivalesque, along with the use of drama as a platform
for the hidden transcript of groups subordinate to the dominant ideologies which structured
medieval English society. Ultimately, I desire to provide an analysis of the use and purpose of
1
Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1986) 72.
2
Stallybrass and White 27.
3
Stallybrass and White 27.
4
Lynn Forest-Hill, Transgressive Language in Medieval English Drama: Signs of Challenge and Change
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2000) 6.
5
Forest-Hill 6.
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transgressive, carnivalesque actions within medieval English drama using specific evidence from
the plays Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, Herod and the Magi, The Slaughter of the Innocents,
The Fall of the Angels and The Fall of Man.
Actions are considered transgressive when they “ignore religious teaching, or the
ecclesiastical and secular laws”6 governing behavior in society. Language, for example, may be
transgressive according to the ways in which it is used, or in the form it takes.7 Additionally,
actions which defy the advice presented in conduct literature could also be considered
transgressive. Starting in the thirteenth century, “books explicitly devoted to describing
appropriate patterns of behavior for lay people began to be written.”8 Many contexts govern the
interpretation of actions as transgressive, however. Dramatic contexts may include: tone of
voice, relationship between characters, position of characters within the social hierarchy and the
known virtue or viciousness of a character; social contexts may included: instruction books,
modes of dress and occupation.9 According to Claire Sponsler, social contexts “may conflict
with dramatic contexts to highlight a character’s improper use of language” 10 in medieval
drama, for example, demonstrating how the behavior ignores codes of decorum recognized by
society.
Dramatists who use transgressive language in their plays exploit the distinctions between
language intended to harm, such as insults, abuses, defamation and detraction, and the same
language which is intended to amuse, such as mockery. According to St. Thomas Aquinas,
insults and abuses are sins of disgrace which take place in words. Defamation is related to sins of
6
Forest-Hill 7.
Forest-Hill 8.
8
Claire Sponsler, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods and Theatricality in Late Medieval England (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997) 53.
9
Sponsler 37.
10
Sponsler 37.
7
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disgrace which originate in anger and are open while detraction is related to sins of disgrace
which take place in secret. Alternatively, mockery is considered a trivial abuse uttered from
some spirit of lightheartedness used to amuse or entertain. And, while “defamation was
actionable at law,” “mockery was not actionable at law.”11
Conduct books and literature promoted themselves by advocating decorum as a useful
tool for socioeconomic mobility and personal happiness. Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, for
example, advised readers to be sure to imitate only good examples of behavior and to avoid bad
ones, like: the “unthrift Ruskyn galante/ Counterfeter of vnconnyng curtoisye,” whose “tacchis
ben enfecte with vilonye”12 and who is a bad role model – “uncouth, loud talking, too tightly
laced.”13 In How the Wise Man Taught His Son, fathers are directed to advise their sons to “tell
not all thynges þat þou maye,” “for þi tongue may be thy fo.”14 The conduct literature, too, it
seems, focuses on speech for “only the son’s tongue threatens disruption and needs restraint.”15
Daughters, however, required more guidance and tutelage, at least as reflected in conduct books
such as How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter. As a consequence of the innate unruliness of
the female subject, daughters had to be ordered to be “meke and myld”16 and to be “of gode
berynge and of gode tonge.”17 The daughter was directed “not to scorn anyone…and to be in
general”18 “suete of speche,”19 for the socially constructed female body is “dangerous primarily
at its boundary area of the mouth,”20 which according to Sponsler, must be aggressively
11
Forest-Hill 13-14.
William Caxton, Book of Curtesye ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London: Trübner, 1898) 45, lns. 451-53.
13
Sponsler 74.
14
How the Wise Man Taught His Son in Manners and Meals in Olden Time ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London:
Trübner, 1898) 34-35.
15
Sponsler 59
16
How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter 20.
17
How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter 24.
18
Sponsler 62
19
How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter 53.
20
Sponsler 62.
12
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controlled. Unlicensed speech “blasting from the ungoverned female body can pierce and disrupt
the social fabric, so must be held back by regulated [licensed] speech.”21 Sponsler goes on to
suggest that
open female mouths – whether giving vent to gusty laughs, wide yawns, or
unrestrained speech – carry a double threat, as late medieval court cases involving
improper female speech make clear. They breach corporeal boundaries, making
the woman’s body dangerously open, while also disrupting social relations by
launching the dangerously open body into the social realm. For this reason, advice
aimed at closing the female mouth can be seen as working to produce a safely
enclosed female subject, one that is less of a threat to the masculinist social
order.22
Ironically, “language which would be punished in society [either in the ecclesiastical
courts or the secular courts] was actually encouraged within the context of medieval drama”23
and conduct literature “unwittingly made a space for imagining the attractions of misbehavior.”24
Spectators of medieval drama, particularly those familiar with “forms of transgressive language
which were condemned in the medieval sermon, but not actionable at law,”25 and conduct
literature “were presented with an opportunity to express disapprobation”26 of the social structure
in “a way which was unlawful in everyday life, yet sanctioned at times when festive inversions
of the hierarchy were licensed”27 – during time spent at the marketplace, fair, festival or the
theatre (where playing took place), for example. Moreover, “theatrical activity had at least the
21
Sponsler 62.
Sponsler 63.
23
Forest-Hill 20.
24
Sponsler 74.
25
Forest-Hill 25.
26
Forest-Hill 20.
27
Forest-Hill 20.
22
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potential to act as a spur to misgovernance, reversing discipline and inciting improper
behavior.”28
While the unlicensed performance of transgressive actions was risky, “licensed
expressions of discontent which focused on the misdemeanours of members of a local
community may have provided the opportunity for that community to ‘let off steam.’”29 Drama
which used licensed transgressive expression may have served as a safety valve for social
discontent which threatened to disrupt the social fabric of the community in question. Through
the use of transgressive actions, such as language for example, hegemonic interests could
maintain control over disruptive forces in society.
Transgressive language is used in the York mystery plays to “define the characters who
use it …and to prompt responses to those characters from the audience.”30 Language in medieval
drama may be identified as transgressive in form (such as insults, abuse, oaths, curses), in
intention (scorn and mockery), or in the sentiments that the language expresses. “Oaths and
curses of all kinds, threats, boasting, scorn, bawdy and offensive language, idle, loquacious and
foolish speech are all to varying degrees”31 influential in plays of the York Corpus Christi cycle.
Audience response to such language serves the social and religious purposes of the plays and
directs attention to the areas of social and religious dissent in medieval English society. In its
role of directing attention to dissent, transgressive language emerges as an analytic tool of
medieval English society and as such shares similarities with the carnivalesque.
28
Sponsler 76.
Forest-Hill 22.
30
Forest-Hill 50.
31
Forest-Hill 27.
29
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The carnivalesque is understood as “a potent, populist, critical inversion of all official
words and hierarchies.”32 According to Mikhail Bakhtin, in his work Rabelais and his World, the
“carnival celebrates temporary liberation from the prevailing truth of the established order; it
marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions…It is hostile to
all that is immortalized and complete.”33 For Bakhtin, the carnivalesque “is the grotesque body at
home with itself, evading the spatial constraints of the public building (the Church, the Law
Court).”34 Not only are the plays carnivalesque, for “carnival in its widest, most general sense
embraced ritual spectacles such as fairs, popular feasts and wakes, processions and
competitions,”35 but language utilized to define and characterized the actors within the plays
themselves should be considered carnivalesque, for the carnival also “included curses, oaths,
slang, humor, popular tricks and jokes, scatological forms, in fact all the low and dirty sorts of
folk humor.”36 The carnival “sets itself up in relationship with official culture and enables a
plural, unfixed, comic view of the world.”37 It is a “potentially indispensible instrument for the
analysis…of cultural politics in general.”38 Whether understood as a cultural safety valve, as an
exercise of power and surveillance, or as an opportunity for genuine revolt, “the basic principle
of carnival is seen to be a downward transformation in which everything socially and spiritually
exalted is represented on the bodily, material level.”39 The carnivalesque is afforded boundless
freedom, while that which is not is enclosed within regulation. The carnivalesque play is thus
32
Peter Stallybrass and Allon White 7.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World trans. H. Iswolsky (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968) 109.
34
Stallybrass and White 28.
35
Stallybrass and White 8.
36
Stallybrass and White 8.
37
K. Arthur qtd. in Stallybrass and White 11.
38
R. Stamm, “On the Carnivalesque,” Wedge, I, (1982) 47.
39
Sponsler, 79.
33
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“seen as unleashing the body, freeing it from its civilizing constraints and licensing it to
misbehave in a variety of crudely rebellious ways.”40
While the use of the carnivalesque is widely understood and presented as one manner of
political critique, it has been argued that, yes, “indeed carnival is so vivaciously celebrated that
the necessary political criticism is almost too obvious to make. Carnival, after all, is a licensed
affair in every sense, a permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow off.”41 The
carnival spirit is not necessarily interpreted as undermining authority, by some, for two reasons,
according to R. Sales: 1) “it was licensed or sanctioned by the authorities themselves…the
release of grievances made them easier to police in the long run” and 2) “the fact that Kings and
Queens were chosen and crowned actually reaffirmed the status quo.”42 With regard to the York
Corpus Christi plays, this may be particularly true. The feast of Corpus Christi was “authorized
by a papal bull of 1264” and “first receives specific mention in England…in 1325.”43 And, one
could argue that the overall message of the plays is the recognition of Jesus Christ as the spiritual
king, the leader of the religious body of York, with the Virgin Mary recognized as a spiritual
queen of sorts. Moreover, while the play cycles and the attendant festival are permitted on
Corpus Christi Day, immediately following, during the morning after the plays, the “procession
and the mass took place.”44 According to Mervyn James, “as a result of this separation two
aspects of the celebration emerged – the procession and the plays – each with a different
significance and function.”45 I posit that the plays and festival were permitted during Corpus
Christi Day to exploit and release the carnivalesque, while the procession and the mass
40
Bakhtin 29.
T. Eagleton, Walter Benjamin: Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verso, 1981) 148.
42
R. Sales, English Literature in History 1780-1830: Pastoral and Politics (London: Hutchinson, 1983) 169.
43
Mervyn James, “Ritual, Drama and Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town,” Past & Present,
No. 98 (Feb., 1983) 4.
44
James 6.
45
James 6.
41
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functioned the day after to reassert and reestablish the structural hierarchy of York: to recognize
authority as such. As Georges Balandier has suggested, “the supreme ruse of power is to allow
itself to be contested ritually in order to consolidate itself more effectively.”46
Is the spectacle of Corpus Christi Day, then, no more than the display of the
carnivalesque for the edification of a national public and the confirmation of imperial authority?
It has been suggested that this inversion of the Bakhtinian view is certainly one possibility. John
Dryden would suggest that “’tis the wisdom of a government to permit plays as ‘tis the prudence
of a carter to put bells upon his horses, to make them carry their burdens cheerfully.”47 ForestHill would posit that the use of the carnivalesque to condemn and punish in the [mystery] plays
cannot, therefore, be regarded as an act of [subversion] by its spectators. It is rather a licensed
act.”48 Sponsler would add, carnivalesque “performances cannot be seen as the …expression of
marginalized groups using subversive discourse to evade or redefine official ideologies.”49
However, James Scott would argue that “any argument which assumes that disguised ideological
dissent or aggression operates as a safety valve to weaken [or temper] ‘real’ resistance ignores
the paramount fact that such ideological dissent is virtually always expressed in practices that
aim at an unobtrusive renegotiation of power relations.”50 In lieu of actual rebellion, “powerless
groups have…a self-interest in conspiring to reinforce hegemonic appearances.”51 As a result,
“every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a ‘hidden transcript’ that represents a critique
of power spoken behind the back of the dominant.”52 Corpus Christi Day, with the production
and the performance of the play cycle being under the control of the non-elites of society, present
46
Qtd. in Stallybrass and White 14.
John Dryden, Essays of John Dryden ed. W.P. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926) 133.
48
Forest-Hill 22.
49
Sponsler xvi.
50
James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1990) 190.
51
Scott xii.
52
Scott xii.
47
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a platform for the display of the hidden transcript of subordinated groups within the society of
York.
The use of transgressive language and transgressive actions – the employ of the
carnivalesque – in Yorkist medieval drama functions as a window into the hidden transcript of
the subordinate. Moreover, “we might interpret the…[dramatic performance] of the powerless as
[a vehicle] which, among other things, [insinuates] a critique of power while hiding behind
anonymity or behind innocuous understandings of conduct.”53 Continuing on, “far from being a
relief valve taking the place of actual resistance, the discoursive practices [of the hidden
transcript] sustain resistance.”54 In its most recognized form, the hidden transcript: 1) “is specific
to a given social site and to a particular set of actors…each hidden transcript is actually
elaborated among a restricted ‘public’ that excludes certain specified others,” 2) “does not
contain only speech acts but a whole range of practices,” and 3) represents “the frontier
between…a zone of constant struggle between dominant and subordinate” ideologies.55 The
hidden transcript, could , therefore, be understood as that which “represents an acting out in
fantasy…of the anger and reciprocal aggression denied by the presence of domination.”56
In the York Joseph’s Troubles about Mary pageant we are introduced to the
transgressive, the carnivalesque and it use to provide entertainment, its ability to critique the
socio-political relations of the characters and its ability to provide religious instruction. The play
uses mockery to arouse humor regarding Joseph’s doubts about the holy mother, ridicule to
punish, or at least question, Joseph in his role as household lord or guardian and raises questions
regarding orthodox religious teaching related to the conception of the Christ-child.
53
Scott xiii.
Scott 191.
55
Scott 14.
56
Scott 37.
54
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In “Religion, Sexuality, and Representation in the York Joseph’s Troubles Pageant,”
Michael George highlights the self-deceptive mockery portrayed by Joseph regarding his doubts
about the pregnancy of Mary. According to George, Joseph presents Mary “to the audience, as
someone very different from [audience] expectations.”57 As Martin Walsh points out, the
audience enters the pageant “in medias res,” with “Joseph already aware of Mary’s
pregnancy.”58 Unable to function sexually, due to old age, Joseph is skeptical of Mary’s
pregnancy and worries that he may have been cuckolded. He believes that he has received a “bad
bargain”59 in marriage, for the “child certes is not”60 his; by “her works,”61 he believes that he
has been decieved. This representation of Mary, as one who practices cuckoldry is known to be
untrue by all in the audience, for Mary is the Virgin Mother. As Joseph’s suspicions and doubts
regarding the paternity of the child lead to his questioning of Mary regarding who has
impregnated her – a total of seven times – Joseph creates a mockery of himself before the
audience and “provides ample material for humor”62 resulting in the farcical for the value of
entertainment. In this episode, transgression has been accomplished not by the form or the
sentiment, but regarding the intention of language – the infusion of doubt with reference to the
orthodox. As George states, Joseph’s representation of Mary, as one who practices cuckoldry,
clashes with her orthodox representation within the Christian religion.63
While transgressive language is used to entertain in Joseph’s Troubles about Mary,
ridicule is highlighted, I would suggest, to question the role of guardianship, of lordship of the
57
Michael W. George, “Religion, Sexuality, and Representation in the York Joseph’s Troubles Pageant,”
Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh ed. Susannah Mary Chewning.
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) 9.
58
Walsh qtd. in George 10.
59
Joseph’s Troubles about Mary. York Mystery Plays eds. Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984) 49, ln. 23.
60
Joseph’s Troubles about Mary, ln. 55
61
Joseph’s Troubles about Mary, ln. 41
62
George 13.
63
George 12.
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household, if you will. The “mixing of old and young in marriage was frowned upon”64 in
medieval society. The marriage of Joseph and Mary represents such a union, with Joseph taking
on the role of the senex amans, the elderly man. Although George suggests that Joseph is
supposed to represent a protector of Mary, a chaperone if you will, and not a lecherous old man
seeking sex with a younger woman, I would suggest that his inability to protect her honor and
prevent her from becoming pregnant while living within his household sheds light on the hidden
transcript which may question such arrangements in medieval society. Perhaps this may account
for Joseph’s doubts being presented as “ridiculous” (at least according to George). Forest-Hill
makes the claim that “drama’s treatment of lordship…exploits society’s license to punish
socially disruptive behavior through ridicule.”65 I would concur with Forest-Hill and suggest that
the ridicule projected upon Joseph by the audience, the response to the comic, the humorous,
would constitute what Bakhtin calls the carnivalesque laugh. Carnivalesque laughter “humiliated
and mortified” and “provided a complex vital repertoire…which could be used for parody,
subversive humour and inversion.”66 By responding to such inversion through carnivalesque
laughter as a response to the humor created by Joseph’s mockery, the sociopolitical position of
the paterfamilias could be called into question. What are young women to do when they follow
the advice of conduct literature and adhere to the dominance of the male head of the household,
yet are still questioned and accused of impropriety? Such a situation may lead one to take a
lover; the accusations of the paterfamilias would be the same. Perhaps the guardian, the lord,
does not always know best.
64
George 12.
Forest-Hill 24.
66
Bakhtin 11-12.
65
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One last note regarding the Joseph’s Troubles about Mary pageant: what George refers to
as the “elements of fabliaux humor,”67 and I would suggest are components of carnivalesque folk
humor, could work to present the ridiculous nature of those who question the orthodox views of
the conception of the Virgin Mother with child. That is, I would submit that the dramatist of the
pageant attempts to provide a semblance of religious instruction to those (perhaps like those of
the eventual Lollard leaning) within society, who have questions and doubts regarding the
orthodox understandings of Christianity. “Doubters are ridiculous”68 and as George points out
this is “the lesson of the pageant.”69
A mismatch between “linguistic style and social status was considered indecorous” in
medieval society; the use of “transgressive language by figures of authority in medieval drama is
indecorous, and subverts their apparent high status.”70 When used as a means of creating
characterization, the use of the carnivalesque, the transgressive, indicates the spiritual status of
the person. For example, the use of the boasting rant or displays of arrogance by a character or
person of supposed high social status would indicate that the person or character is evil.71 There
is no better example of such a situation than the presentation of Herod within the York mystery
plays.
By the thirteenth century “the name of Herod represents the epitome of human
wickedness. A man without a conscience, Herod is the consummate villain without any
potentially redeeming character traits.”72 The apocryphal tradition created a figure of Herod
which would be the ideal subject of a morality lesson. It was natural then, according to David
67
George 9.
George 13.
69
George 14.
70
Forest-Hill 37.
71
Forest-Hill 25.
72
David Staines, “To Out-Herod Herod: The Development of a Dramatic Character,” The Drama of the Middle
Ages: Comparative and Critical Essays eds. Clifford Davidson, C.J. Gianakaris, and John H. Stroupe (New York:
AMS Press, Inc., 1982) 210.
68
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Staines, that dramatists of the medieval mystery cycles “turn to Herod as an exemplum of the
horror of vice and a frank warning to mankind to avoid evil.”73 Grace Frank would describe
Herod as “a villain whose speech and actions…might be used to suggest his vicious character.”74
In the York Herod and the Magi pageant the audience is immediately introduced to a
boastful, braggadocios King Herod. The first stanza of the king’s speech begins with him
proclaiming that “Jupiter and Jove, Mars and Mercury”75 delight over his reign over the
kingdom. “Saturn”76 is his subject, Herod controls “thunder,”77 and “Venus”78 owes his voice to
Herod himself. He continues in his second stanza of speech with his boastful rant: the “prince of
planets” shines for his pleasure, the “moon” is displayed at his gesture, “Caesars in castles”
present themselves to Herod with great kindness, he is loved by “Lords and ladies,” he is the
“fairer of the face” and “worthy, witty and wise.”79 The use of such language, according to
Forest-Hill demonstrates a level of evil within Herod “defined as opposition to God [incapable]
of change.”80
The boastful rant serves to make the audience aware of Herod’s evil, sinful status and
directs the attention of the audience to the areas of social and religious dissent within society. As
a lord, suggesting that he is greater than all of the gods and perhaps the most wise and witty of
all kings and lords, Herod could be understood as ridiculous and comic in the eyes of the
audience members for they know that the Christian God is almighty and Jesus Christ is his
representative on Earth. Moreover, conduct literature of the medieval period stresses the idea that
73
Staines 210.
Grace Frank, Medieval French Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) 34.
75
Herod and The Magi. York Mystery Plays eds. Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1984) 66, ln. 3.
76
Herod and The Magi ln. 5.
77
Herod and The Magi ln. 8.
78
Herod and The Magi ln. 9.
79
Herod and The Magi lns. 11-22.
80
Forest-Hill 25.
74
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those in positions of high rank should always interact with those beneath their social status with
great humility. The treatment of Mary regarding her aunt Elizabeth exemplifies such a
situation.81 This knowledge, juxtaposed against the boastful rant of Herod regarding his
interaction with subordinates, transforms Herod claims of superiority into lame japery.
By establishing Herod as a king of high social status who is spiritually evil, the dramatist
of the Herod and the Magi pageant also prepares the audience response and reaction for Herod’s
demeaning language regarding the Christ-child later in the play. When Herod refers to Jesus as
“swittering swain”82 the audience has already been prepared to ignore such descriptions of Jesus
for Herod’s evil nature has already been foreshadowed by Herod’s transgressive use of language.
This continued transgressive behavior – speaking of the savior with such demeaning speech –
represents a further disruption of the social fabric by one who would eventually sanction the
death of Jesus. His consistent use of curses, “fie,”83 and his use of “false harlots” to describe the
three kings who announced the existence of Jesus also underscore Herod’s marginality with
regards to all that is sacred and exalted within Christianity. Nothing, however, suggests Herod’s
anti-Christian stance as much as his allegiance to Mahound.
In the York mystery plays only supremely evil lords and their vassals and servants are
associated with Mahound. The invocation of Mahound, “in contrast to devil oaths and curses,
signifies a hierarchy of power and authority based on anti-Christian temporal and metaphysical
allegiances which may be alien to medieval society.”84 While the alienation represented by
Herod usually focuses upon his cultural ‘otherness’ in relationship to medieval English society,
this does not have to be so: this is only one reading. As a ruler – a lord, a king – Herod’s
81
While the situation of Mary and Elizabeth reflects the interaction and suggested conduct between women, the
focus on the desired nature of interaction between those of differing social status still remains valid.
82
Herod and The Magi ln. 263.
83
Herod and The Magi ln. 177.
84
Forest-Hill 30.
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alienation with regards to his invocation of Mahound could suggest the alienation of a king from
those subjects over whom he rules. The association of Herod with Mahound could reflect the
hidden transcript of the subordinate and its suggestion that the ruling classes of medieval
England, York in particular, are out off touch with the lower classes over whom they dominate.
And, because the number of curses and devil oaths and acknowledgements of Mahound by
Herod only increase as the play cycle progresses, it could be suggested that the hidden transcript
is depicting the continued increase in the alienation of the ruling class from those over whom
they rule. Herod only exclaims the name of Mahound one time in Herod and the Magi, yet he
speaks the name of Mahound five times in The Slaughter of the Innocents, a play 180 lines
shorter than Herod and the Magi.85 This suggests that the alienation between those in a position
of lordship and those over whom they rule is increasing and within a shorter time period.
Herod and his characterization and presentation within the York cycle does represent a
carnivalesque analysis of lordship within medieval English society. While the representation of
the king as evil and arrogant and bombastic may be sanctioned within the licensed confines of
the festive, the role of lordship in general nonetheless undergoes a critique. I posit that this
critique of lordship, far from acting as a safety valve for the feelings and emotions and angers of
the subordinates, operates as a manner of sustaining such feelings until a mechanism which
allows for greater power relations negotiations presents itself. Perhaps such a situation presented
itself with the reign of Charles II.
Herod, like all “authority, kings and bishops [is a] villain.”86 Generally speaking, the
York cycle “identifies pride and rebellion against God with nearly everyone in the plays who
85
Mahound is referenced in the following lines in the York The Slaughter of the Innocents: 15, 19, 35, 74, and 277.
Arnold Williams, “The Comic in the Cycles,” in Medieval Drama, ed. Neville Denny (London: Oxford University
Press, 1973) 120.
86
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possesses wealth, social prestige, and political power.”87 According to Robert Weimann, this
social bias is the result of authorship of the plays by members of the [lower social ranks] who
sponsored…rebellious festivities.88 I posit that by adhering to a hidden transcript which
recognized, acknowledged and condemned “upper-class abuses, as the plays [of the York cycle]
continually do”89 the moral assumptions which underscored communal cohesion were effectively
reinforced. With this understanding in mind, Lucifer, Satan, is emblematic as the ultimate villain,
transgressor of accepted behavior norms and exemplar of the carnivalesque.
While John Cox, in The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642, clearly
believes that Satan as understood as the devil “seldom [appears] in the carnival attitudes that are
often described as [his] essential character,”90 I would have to disagree. Cox bases his analysis
“on the merest suggestion of scatological humor”91 in plays in which the devil appears. However,
if we take into consideration that the carnivalesque incorporates more than words, but words and
actions, then perhaps we can overcome Cox’s reluctance to understand the devil and his
seriousness as not only transgressive, but carnivalesque. If we interpret the carnivalesque as that
excluded from official discourse, that used in the furtherance of parody and that which is
indispensible for analysis, then, by default Satan’s mere existence and his actions qualify as the
carnivalesque (as least partly, I would argue). Cox himself suggests “Lucifer’s fall as an
oppositional paradigm [in relation to heaven] for community division.”92 Lucifer is emblematic
of a rupture within society. The open mouths of the medieval daughter may present the danger of
87
John Cox, The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000) 23.
88
qtd. in Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater ed. Robert Schwartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1978) 20-21.
89
Cox 22.
90
Cox 24
91
Cox 23
92
Cox 19.
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rupture within the social fabric, but Lucifer is division within the social body. Consider his
actions (and his bombastic language!) in The Fall of the Angels and The Fall of Man.
First, it is Lucifer’s speech which results in the rupture of community, the split between
heaven and hell, for he “said but a thought.”93 But, his thought is boastful. Boastful speech, as
has been argued, is transgressive and as such carnivalesque. Lucifer claims that he is “like a
lord” and “more fairer by far than my feres.”94 He views himself as exalted to a position higher
than all of the other angels, his companions. He even, it could be argued, places himself on par
with God, claiming that he is “on height in the highest of heaven.”95 It is such speech which
leads to the rupture of heaven, the division of the world between one of “mirth” and “bliss”
contrasted with a world of “woe” and “blackest and blo.”96 There develops an “opposition
between mirth and bliss in the community of heaven before the revolt of Lucifer, and “communal
strife and division afterwards.”97 It is Lucifer’s behavior, his inability to ‘tell not all thynges þat
þou maye,’ ‘for þi tongue may be thy fo’ which results in expulsion from heaven. And 2 Devil
recognizes his speech as the action responsible for their downfall: “To spill us thou was our
speeder/ For thou was our light and our leader.” 2 Devil rightly speaks of Lucifer’s role and
responsibility in the fall and the rejection of their kind. Beyond his actions in opposition to God,
Lucifer use of curses, lurdan, also suggest an act of transgressive speech. While it may not be of
the scatological type, so requisite for Cox, it is transgressive speech nonetheless and the type
defined as carnivalesque by Bakhtin.
93
The Fall of Angels. York Mystery Plays eds. Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984) 6, ln. 113.
94
The Fall of Angels 3, lns. 52-54.
95
The Fall of Angels 5, ln. 88.
96
The Fall of Angels 5, ln. 101.
97
Cox 20.
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Second, the more deliberate actions of Lucifer, represented by the seduction of Eve, come
into play and visit his divisive and repellant spirit unto mankind. In The Fall of Man, because his
“wit is in a were”98 and God “dedigned”99 him, he sets out to “betray”100 man. Using a speech act
as a trick, he succeeds in the rupture of the blissful community enjoyed by mankind. Oh, Satan is
a dangerous threat to the social body which must be regulated.
The devil – Lucifer, Satan – represents the rebellious prince. He actions of revolt are
similar to the palace uprising. As such, he is representative of lords and the powerful. He is the
cause of the fractured realm. He is rupture. He is disunity. He is the site of contestation: in short,
he is transgression and the carnivalesque. As Cox suggests, and with this I agree, “the function of
the devil in the mystery plays is to be the oppositional Enemy.” He has fallen outside the center,
outside the confines of official discourse: a parody alternative to the guidance offered by God.
Bakhtin’s central insight still holds for me. The York mystery play is symbolic action
which is rarely mere play. It articulates cultural and political and social meanings, and any
elision of real politics with the serious consigns the subordinate classes to contesting power
within a problematic which has positioned them as vulgar, as low. To define the carnivalesque as
a process of hybridization is not to neutralize its role as a kind of contestation, but to
acknowledge that the carnivalesque tends to operate as a critique of dominant ideology which
has already set the terms, designating what is high and what is low. It such circumstances, the
low has to challenge the high backstage - out of view of the dominant - utilizing the hidden
transcript.
98
The Fall of Man. York Mystery Plays eds. Richard Beadle and Pamela King (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984) 9, ln. 1.
99
The Fall of Man 9, ln. 5.
100
The Fall of Man 9, ln. 21.
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