Truth in Dramatic Form

What was it that compelled the medieval townspeople of York to write, stage, and perform renditions of the story of Christ? Why was reading and meditating on the bible or attending mass not enough?  Why did the townspeople of York themselves have to embody the stories they told?

Well, it might be good to first start with what the plays weren’t: notably, they weren’t always true to the source material.  For example, the premise of Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, namely that Joseph is trying to understand how Mary could be both pregnant and a virgin, directly contradicts the gospels.[1]  Later, in The Flight into Egypt, in a moment of great dramatic irony, Mary appears to be ignorant about her son’s future, saying, “His foe? Alas, what is your rede, \ Who would my dear bairn do to dead? \ I dark, I dare \ Who may my care \ Of bales blin? \ To flee I would full fain, \ For all this world to win \ Would I not see him slain” (YMP p. 83).  The innocent but naive attitude towards the perception of her son (‘How could anyone dislike my son? What did he do wrong?’) was inaccurately attributed to Mary in the York plays.  The ‘real’ Mary, from the liturgy, bravely consented to bear the son of God with full knowledge that he would be sacrificed.[2] So clearly, the plays weren’t an exercise in precise representation of the Christian scriptures. The people of York didn’t put on these plays to simply teach or remind the town of the story of Christ since accuracy of storytelling clearly was not of the highest priority.  

Why, then, did the people of York put on the same production for over two hundred years?  I think it has something to do with empathy. In the same way that Anselm practices articulating the definition of God so that he may increase his understanding of the divine, the townspeople of York put themselves in the shoes of the biblical characters so they can try to feel what the characters must have felt. Even though Joseph did not doubt the virgin birth of Mary, the people of medieval York performed Joseph’s Trouble about Mary to, in some sense, project their wonder of the virgin birth onto the characters. Perhaps they acted out this play in order to contemplate what it could have been like to witness and be a part of the incredible event of the virgin birth.  How did Mary feel about bringing God into the world? How did she balance her urges as a mother to protect her son from the world with her Godly duty to give up her son to the world?  These questions were likely explored through The Flight into Egypt, in which the characters not only dress up and assume the character of Mary and Joseph, but physically move around the streets.  

It is not trivial that drama includes stage directions and movement.  Apart from simply saying lines, the York actors moved throughout the ‘stage’/performance area, and on top of that, they traveled through the whole town playing their part (YMP xviii).  Maybe traveling through the town helped some of the actors embody Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt…  Overall, the people of York were trying to access a form of embodied knowledge that cannot be expressed through mere contemplation or dialogue, a form of knowledge that must be acted out to be understood. Drama offers the precise method to develop one’s empathy and this kind of embodied knowledge.

Upon reflection, it seems as if empathy is fundamental to Christian morality. Christians are in a constant battle to act in this world as Jesus would, and in order to understand how Jesus would act, one needs to understand the love he felt for us. “What would Jesus do?” can not be thought of in isolation to “How did Jesus feel?” On the feast day of Corpus Christi in late-medieval York, everyday people quite literally had the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of Jesus, and it is my guess that many probably found it to be a profound devotional experience. Moreover, it may be understood that practicing empathy is a form of imitating Christ, for Christ was, in a sense, the ultimate empathizer.  Over and over in this class, we have articulated the mystery of “God creating the world, and then entering his own creation.”  Is this not the ultimate act of empathy? God, the greatest being of all, entering his fallen creation and assuming its form is the archetypal example of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, is it not? With this understanding of Christ, it is empathy which connects the sublime and the humble. Empathy is not only God assuming the form of man, but it is also man reciprocating by empathizing with and acting like Christ.

This whole question (of drama, empathy, and truth) and is nested within a larger idea: that the way in which medieval Christians saw and represented reality was through a narrative lens.  Based on the book of hours calendar we saw in class, we know that the very way in which medieval Christians oriented themselves to time was in a narrative fashion, specifically the Christian narrative. Their everyday life and chores -- slaughtering the pigs, collecting the harvest -- coincided with (or rather, was nested within) the sublime narrative of Christ. From these calendars, I can imagine a medieval person using feast days and holy days as a schema for remembering the past (i.e. “Ah I remember, you were born right after the feast day of the assumption of Mary” or “The mass of the archangels Michael and Gabriel is approaching. I guess that means the harvest is coming soon”).

Here is the coolest part about seeing reality through a narrative lens (which I believe everyone does, but the medieval Christians were acutely aware of this): what if it is possible for you to choose the story you want to be in? What if you were not just a character in some story, but you had say over what your character did, and whether your story had a happy ending?  Rephrased, what if you have a say in authoring your future? Medieval Christians believed this to be true, and so they chose to write themselves into the most awesome, beautiful, and meaningful story that they could conceive: the story of Christ. This, I believe, helps in part to explain why Christians are so insistent on free-will. They insist that humans have the freedom to choose what their story is, and the Christians are those who choose that their individual story should become a part of the ultimate story of Christ. By becoming a part of Christ’s story and making Him a part of theirs, the people of York get to share in the happy ending of the Christian story: eternal life.

I’m starting to understand why the townspeople of York, of their own volition, chose to write themselves into the story of Christ, literally.  

-Andy Cohen

---

[1] “And Joseph rising up from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife. And he knew her not till she brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.” (Matthew 1:24-25)  Note that this description of Joseph is in direct opposition of the character of Zachary, who doubts the very same Angel Gabriel: “Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years” (Luke 1:18), and is thus made mute for his lack of faith.  It is in fact Joseph’s lack of faith in Gabriel’s message that is the plot of Joseph’s Trouble about Mary.

[2] One instance of her knowledge of this is in Simeon’s prophecy that Jesus is “set for the fall” (Luke 2:34)

York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling, ed. Richard Beadle and Pamela King (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)