The Nature of Audience Response in Medieval and Early Modern Drama Seeks to Interrogate and Explore
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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2014 Stages of Belief: The aN ture of Audience Response in Medieval and Early Modern Drama Rebecca Cepek Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Cepek, R. (2014). Stages of Belief: The aN ture of Audience Response in Medieval and Early Modern Drama (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/387 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STAGES OF BELIEF: THE NATURE OF AUDIENCE RESPONSE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN DRAMA A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Rebecca Cepek May 2014 Copyright by Rebecca Cepek 2014 STAGES OF BELIEF: THE NATURE OF AUDIENCE RESPONSE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN DRAMA By Rebecca Cepek Approved March 18, 2014 ________________________________ ________________________________ Anne Brannen, Ph.D. Laura Engel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Dissertation Director) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Stuart M. Kurland, Ph.D. John E. Lane, Jr., M.A. Associate Professor of English Associate Professor of Theater Arts (Committee Member) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal, Ph.D. Greg Barnhisel, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate Chair, Department of English School of Liberal Arts Associate Professor of English Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT STAGES OF BELIEF: THE NATURE OF AUDIENCE RESPONSE IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN DRAMA By Rebecca Cepek May 2014 Dissertation supervised by Professor Anne Brannen Medieval theatrical audiences expected that dramatic performances would have some element of truth: they believed that what they saw performed was in some sense factual, and this belief was due in large part to their participation in the dramatic spectacle. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, audiences easily differentiated between reality and the fictional world of the stage. What became blurred was the difference between the fact of the performers’ lives and the fictional roles they embodied on stage. I make clear the connections between these responses through an analysis of a variety of texts, including “The Pinners Play” (York), the “Sacrifice of Isaac” (Brome), the Chester Cycle, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a variety of antitheatrical texts, elegies and other texts written in response to the death of famed early modern actor Richard Burbage, and the biography of eighteenth-century actor Lavinia Fenton. It is my contention that medieval, early modern, and eighteenth-century audiences responded to dramatic performances as experiences that created the reality they seemed only to reflect. Although these iv responses took different forms, they are fundamentally similar and related. This stems from the drama’s function as a method of thinking about and processing reality. As such, audience response to drama assumes, on some generally unexamined level, that drama bears some relationship to reality, that it speaks some type of truth. Ultimately, this study reveals the connections between these very different times and provides an important point of departure for examining the role of belief and audience response in other genres and periods. v DEDICATION To my husband, Frank – forever, and a couple of days after that. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to my committee, Anne Brannen, Laura Engel, John Lane, and Stuart Kurland, for their boundless patience, kindness, and support. I especially want to thank Anne Brannen for her advice and friendship, and for supplying me with an excellent role model as a scholar, teacher, and human being. I would not have attempted this project without her. I want to extend my thanks as well to Laura Callanan, without whose advice and guidance I would never even have finished the Master’s program. She helped me to understand the importance of what we do, and for that, I will be forever grateful. I would also like to acknowledge my dear friend and writing partner, Gina Bessetti- Reyes, who provided me lots of encouragement, advice, and laughter. I want also to thank my family: my parents for always knowing I could do this, my sister for her advice, and my brother for his suggestions and encouragement. Finally, I owe more thanks than I could ever express to my amazing husband, Frank, the mainstay of my existence, who never let me quit and my wonderful and kind sons, Alec and Joey, who will always be the center of my world. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgement ........................................................................................................................ vii A Note on the Text ......................................................................................................................... xi Introduction “Something … that nearly belonged to the gods”: The Reality of Drama .............. xii STAGES OF BELIEF: THE THEORETICAL BASIS ................................................................................... xvi THE MIDDLE AGES AND AUDIENCE RESPONSE ................................................................................... xx THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: BUILDING THE FOURTH WALL ............................................................. xxv A BRIEF CRITICAL HISTORY .............................................................................................................. xxvi ACTORS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND .......................................................................................... xxviii STAGES OF BELIEF: TEXTUAL STRUCTURE ........................................................................................ xxx ADDITIONAL POSSIBILITIES FOR SCHOLARSHIP .............................................................................. xxxv Chapter One “The eye with which I see God”: Drama as Reality in the York “Crucifixion” and the Brome “Isaac” .......................................................................................................................... 1 AFFECTIVE PIETY AND AUDIENCE RESPONSE ....................................................................................... 5 A QUESTION OF STAGING ....................................................................................................................... 8 THEOLOGICAL COMEDY ........................................................................................................................ 11 THE LANGUAGE OF THE PLAYS ............................................................................................................ 12 THE IMPORTANCE OF WORK IN THE YORK “CRUCIFIXION”: POSITIONING THE AUDIENCE ............ 13 MOVING THE AUDIENCE: CHANGES IN LANGUAGE AND PERSPECTIVE ............................................ 15 MEMORY AND THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA ............................................................................................... 19 THE BROME “ISAAC” AND THE ROLE OF THE AUDIENCE ................................................................... 21 THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC IN MEDIEVAL DRAMA ................................................................................ 22 THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC AS COMPELLING DRAMA ........................................................................... 24 MEDIEVAL DRAMA AS BIBLICAL EXEGESIS ........................................................................................ 26 THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC: POSSIBLE INTERPRETATIONS .................................................................... 28 THE CHESTER “ABRAHAM AND ISAAC” ............................................................................................... 31 THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC: TESTING ABRAHAM .................................................................................. 32 viii THE IMAGO DEI: INTERPRETING GOD’S NATURE................................................................................ 35 THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC: FAITH VERSUS REASON ............................................................................ 39 THE BROME ISAAC: THE MYSTERY AND ABSURDITY OF FAITH ........................................................ 42 THE ROLE OF THE FATHER: ABRAHAM AND GOD ............................................................................... 43 THE AUDIENCE AS GRIEVING FATHER ................................................................................................. 46 Chapter Two “To find the mortal world enough”: The Chester Cycle and the Advent of the Fourth Wall ................................................................................................................................... 51 THE CHESTER CYCLE, THE FOURTH WALL, AND BRECHT ................................................................... 52 THE MEDIEVAL