The Divine is in the Details: Changing Representations of God in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama

252 Pages·2012·3.07 MB·English

by  Valerie Ann Dennis

The Divine is in the Details:
Changing Representations of God in Medieval and Early Modern English Drama

By

VALERIE ANN DENNIS
B.A. (University of Oregon) 1999
M.A. (University of California, Davis) 2006

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

English

in the

OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DAVIS

Approved:

_____________________________

Frances Dolan, Co-chair

_____________________________

Seeta Chaganti, Co-chair

_____________________________

Margaret Ferguson

Committee in Charge

2012
i
UMI Number: 3540495
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VALERIE ANN DENNIS

2012
Abstract

Medieval drama frequently included God and Christ as characters, but after the
English Reformation, direct representations of the Deity became less common,
disappearing from the public stage by the end of the sixteenth century. God’s absence
from the stage is one of the major differences between medieval and early modern
English drama, often viewed by critics as evidence of a process of secularization.
Challenging the secularization theory, this project argues that post-Reformation plays
engaged in theological debates, such as those between Arminianism and Calvinism,
through indirect depictions of the Deity. Post-Reformation playwrights used personified
aspects of God, demons and their pacts, and marriage covenants to stand in for the Deity
and the Christian covenant. These indirect depictions of God protected playwrights and
players from censorship and punition. Furthermore, the playwrights’ use of limited,
abstract personifications or unreliable characters to convey ambiguous information about
God’s role in human affairs placed responsibility on audience members to draw their own
conclusions about the Deity and Christianity.
To demonstrate the changes and continuities between early modern and medieval
depictions of God, this project compares the divine characters represented in the Chester,
N-Town, Wakefield, and York medieval mystery plays with the problematic depiction of
Christ in John Bale’s post-Reformation The Temptation of Our Lord, exposing the
difficulties Bale encountered and suggesting why post-Reformation playwrights
abandoned direct depictions of the Deity. Furthermore, a comparison of an array of
medieval and early modern morality plays reveals that post-Reformation playwrights
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borrowed and adapted medieval playwrights’ use of personification allegories to depict
attributes of God, conveying a fractured view of the Deity. Finally, this project examines
the use of demons and demonic pacts to invoke God and Christianity in both tragedies
and comedies, including Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Barnes’ The Devil’s Charter,
Rowley, Dekker and Ford’s The Witch of Edmonton, Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, Jonson’s The Devil Is an Ass, and Davenport’s A
New Trick to Cheat the Devil.

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To my father, for the summer Shakespeare plays in Ashland and the countless dramatic

readings of “Jabberwocky.”

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Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

Chapter One: The Role of Demons in Shaping Audience Response to
Divine Characters in Medieval Mystery Plays 18

Chapter Two: John Bale and the Temptation to Stage Christ 61

Chapter Three: Personified Attributes of the Christian Deity in
Medieval and Early Modern Morality Plays 102

Chapter Four: Demonic Contracts in Early Modern Tragedies 145

Chapter Five: Demonic Pacts and Marriage Covenants in Early
Modern Comedies 197

Epilogue 237

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Acknowledgements
So many people—friends, family, and professors— have helped and inspired me
as I wrote this dissertation.
As co-chair for this project, Frances Dolan has been instrumental in helping me
move beyond the details, see the bigger picture, and put all of my ideas together. I am
extremely grateful for Fran’s wise and gentle guidance on the dissertation and on so
many other aspects of my graduate experience. My topic sprang from the experience of
taking Seeta Chaganti’s seminar on medieval drama during the same semester that I read
Paradise Lost with Margaret Ferguson, giving me the opportunity to think about demons
across the divide of the English Reformation. From my first semester at the University of
California, Davis, Seeta has encouraged me and helped me to examine my assumptions
and to write with precision. I am very grateful to her for guiding me through my master’s
thesis as well as co-chairing my dissertation committee. Margie has challenged me to
think broadly and immerse myself in my topic. Her enthusiasm and encouragement
inspired me and helped me see the project from a fresh perspective when my energy was
waning. Fran, Seeta, and Margie have all helped me move from being a student to a
scholar through their insightful advice and genuine kindness.
I benefitted from a UC Davis Department of English Summer Dissertation and
Research Fellowship that allowed me to travel to the Huntington Library. The research I
did there contributed to my second chapter and set the foundation for my third chapter.
I am thankful for the laughter and camaraderie of my friends, cohort, and fellow
early-modernists at UC Davis. I feel fortunate to have learned from and studied with such
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a wonderful, supportive, and admirable group of people. Vanessa Rapatz is an especially
dear friend; I am so glad that we could face the slings and arrows of graduate school
together.
I am grateful for the love and patience of my mother, father, sister, and brother,
who have encouraged me from childhood to pursue my interests and follow my dreams. I
owe special thanks to my father, who nurtured my love for literature.
Finally, I am grateful for the support of my husband, Nathan Dennis, who inspires
me every day with his intelligence and love.

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1

Introduction

A profound change occurred in English drama of the sixteenth century: Christ,
arguably the most important character in medieval drama, made an exit. Within
approximately sixty five years from the start of the Reformation in England, God and
Christ no longer appeared as characters in the public theater. Playwrights during and after
the English Reformation seem to have avoided depictions of Christ and God, with the
exception of John Bale in 1538 and Lewis Wager in 1558. Meanwhile, the mystery plays,
which featured these divine characters, stopped being performed sometime between 1569
and 1609.1 The end of the mystery plays was also the end of Christ and God as stage
characters in England.2
Nevertheless, for centuries, theology and doctrine had been central themes in
English drama, and they did not disappear from the stage with the Deity. Although
medieval playwrights had the freedom to stage divine characters directly, they also used
other characters, such as demons and personified aspects of God, to help them
characterize numinous beings and their influence on the world. Early modern
playwrights, forced by the religious and political climate to avoid direct depictions of the
divine, expanded on the medieval use of demons and personification allegory to fill in the

1 Harold Gardiner explains that “Every one of the four great cycles which have come down to us
can be shown, with varying clarity, to have been put down through the intervention of authority within the
period 1569-80, and that upon religious motives” (Mystery’s End [Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1967],
72). See also Peter Happé, “‘Erazed in the Booke’: The Mystery Cycles and Reform,” in Tudor Drama
Before Shakespeare, 1485-1590, ed. Lloyd Kermode, Jason Scott-Warren, and Martine Van Elk (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 15. Paul Whitfield White suggests that the mystery plays “may have
been played as late as 1609” (“Theater and Religious Culture,” in A New History of Early English Drama,
ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan [New York: Columbia University Press, 1997], 134-135).
2 For a fascinating study of the persistent “theatrical myth” that it was illegal to stage the Deity,
see Olga Horner’s “The Law That Never Was: A Review of Theatrical Censorship in Britain,” Medieval
English Theatre 23 (2001): 34-96. She also discusses the return of the characters of God and Christ to the
English stage in the 1800s, as does John R. Elliott, Jr. in Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern
Stage (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1989).