I 1+ M. Vox THE CASTLE AND THE VIRGIN IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE DRAMA John H. Meagher III A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December, 1976 Approved by Doctoral Committee BOWLING GREEN UN1V. LIBRARY 13 © 1977 JOHN HENRY MEAGHER III ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 11 ABSTRACT This study examined architectural metaphor and setting in civic pageantry, religious processions, and selected re­ ligious plays of the middle ages and renaissance. A review of critical works revealed the use of an architectural setting and metaphor in classical Greek literature that continued in Roman and medieval literature. Related examples were the Palace of Venus, the House of Fortune, and the temple or castle of the Virgin. The study then explained the devotion to the Virgin Mother in the middle ages and renaissance. The study showed that two doctrines, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary, were illustrated in art, literature, and drama, show­ ing Mary as an active interceding figure. In civic pageantry from 1377 to 1556, the study found that the architectural metaphor and setting was symbolic of a heaven or structure which housed virgins personifying virtues, symbolically protective of royal genealogy. Pro­ tection of the royal line was associated with Mary, because she was a link in the royal line from David and Solomon to Jesus. As architecture was symbolic in civic pageantry of a protective place for the royal line, so architecture in religious drama was symbolic of, or associated with the Virgin Mother. The study showed that the N-Town cycle con­ tinually associated Mary with the castle, tower, taber­ nacle and temple. In The Castle of Perseverance, a morality play written between 1410-1425, the central structure functioned sym­ bolically as in the cycle plays. Referring to sources, analogous dramatic techniques and themes, similar patterns in the mythology and drama of the Virgin Mother, and refer­ ences within the play, the study shows that the central structure symbolized the garden of Eden, the temple and the church. Each of those places was associated with Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ as the new Eve, or the castle of virtue, or the Virgin of Mercy. Similarly, in the Digby play of Mary Magdalen, a cen­ tral structure was used in an arena setting. Examining the sources and analogues including the Golden Legend, Myrc's Festial, cycle plays about Mary and the Passion of Christ, Latin passion plays, and The Castle of Perseverance, the study concluded that the essential symbolic meaning of the central structure is that of the temple associated with the Virgin Mother. The study concluded that the architectural metaphor and setting of medieval and early renaissance drama in arena settings often symbolized the temple or church associated with the Virgin Mother. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR AND SETTING IN CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL LITERATURE. .... 1 THE VIRGIN MOTHER IN RITUAL AND ART IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND RENAISSANCE......... 24 ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR IN TOURNAMENTS AND CIVIC PAGEANTRY ......................... 55 RELATIONSHIP OF ARCHITECTURE TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER IN ART AND DRAMA. 100 THE MEANING OF THE CENTRAL STRUCTURE OR CASTLE IN THE CASTLE OF PERSEVERANCE........ 156 ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR AND SETTING RELATED TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER IN THE DIGBY MARY MAGDALEN............ .. 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................ 236 I ARCHITECTURAL METAPHOR AND SETTING IN CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL LITERATURE Drama, like other literary forms, employs metaphor, symbol and setting to emphasize major themes. This study describes an important set of architectural metaphors, symbols and settings in early English moral drama. To help interpret the meaning of these devices, analogues from civic pageantry, painting, sculpture, religious liturgy, ivory carvings and literature are described and explained. Analogues from Greek, Roman, biblical, patristic, medieval and renaissance sources are examined in the first three chapters, while the remaining two chaoters describe and explain the architectural metaphors, symbols and settings in two major medieval English moral plays. The plays were selected for their references to architecture and for their important place in the literary history of English drama. In this study, The Castle of Perseverance (ca. 1425), and the Digby play of Mary Magdalen (1520-30), are examined specifically for their references to architecture. The architectural form most frequently noted is the castle, but the ark, bower, tabernacle, temple, tower, citadel and city are also examined. Common to all of these architectural references is a comparison to the human body, soul, state of mind, or condition of life. Of these architectural refer­ ences the most interesting one alludes to the Virgin Mother of Christ, in her role as the mother of God, the mother of the church, the Immaculate Conception, or as one who was 2. raised by God to heaven. This study examines architectural elements in drama symbolic of and related to the Virgin Mother. In order to gain an understanding of the architectural references and their meanings, it is necessary to review origins in classical, biblical, and early medieval sources, as well as works contemporary with the plays examined in this study. The review is necessary because elements of pagan, Jewish and Christian beliefs and literature are even­ tually brought together in medieval literary and artistic expression of architectural images. The major, studies of architectural references were written before 1935 and did not focus on drama, but a review of these studies provides historical background for an examination of architecture and its symbolic meaning in drama. The architectural metaphor has a long history, and three separate studies shed the most light: William Allan Neilson's The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, H.R. Patch's The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature, and Roberta Cornelius' "The Figurative Castle As with many elements of English literature, references to architecture appear to begin in Greek literature. ^William Allan Neilson, The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1914), pp. 1-17; H.R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature (1927; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1967), pp. 123-146; Roberta Cornelius, "The Figurative Castle," Diss. Bryn Mawr 1930. 3. Roberta Cornelius traces references to the edifice as a 2 metaphor back to Theagenes of Rhegium, Xenophon, and Plato. For instance, Plato's Timaeus uses the motif as an analogue to the human body. Longinus, in the Essay on the Sublime summarizes Plato's use of this allegory: Xenophon gives us...an impressive picture of the anatomy of man's bodily dwelling, and Plato does the same even more divinely. He calls the head the citadel, the neck an isthmus between it and the body. The vertebrae, he says, are fixed under it like pivots; pleasure is a bait of evil for men; the tongue is the assayer of taste; the heart is the knot of the vein and the source of the blood which courses violently round, and it is established in the guardhouse.3 The metaphor of an edifice for the body was used throughout classical, biblical, medieval and renaissance literature including Elizabethan and Jacobean works. 4 Another important expression of the figurative building was the Palace of Venus in its early contexts. William Allan Neilson's The Origins and Sources of the Court of Love traces 2 . Cornelius, p. 1. 3 G.M.A. Crube, trans., Longinus, On Great Writing (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1957), p. 43. Cornelius trans­ lates "bodily dwelling" as "human tabernacle," based on a translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe. ^See Cornelius, pp. 1, 2; William C. McAvoy, "Form in Richard II, II, i, 40-66," JEGP, 54, 355-61; Thomas L. Berger, "The Petrarchan Fortress of The Changeling," Renais­ sance Papers (1972), 37-46; Arthur C. Kirsch, Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia (1973), 81-83; Samuel Purchas, Microcosmus or the Historie of Man, (1619: facsimile rpt. New York: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd. and Da Capo Press, 1969), pp. 32-143. BOWLING GREEN UNIV. LIBRARZ ---- — ---- -- 4. the history of allegory associated with the Palace of Venus in classical and medieval literature.He notes that "In Homer all the gods have houses, and from these doubtless the later descriptions are elaborated. The palace of Apollo in the beginning of Book ii of Ovid's Metamorphoses is an example, and may also be a source, of the gorgeous descrip­ tions of castles such as we have in the Court of Love...."^ Neilson also mentions that a source of Chaucer's "House of Fame" was Ovid's Metamorphoses xii, 11. 39-63, in which Fame reigns in an edifice located between the earth and heaven which is set extremely high, with streets and openings 7 without doors. In another source, the Metamorphosis of 8 Apuleius, Psyche woke up in a grove with a fountain. In Claudian's De Nuptiis Honorii et Mariae, the Palace of Venus is situated "...in a flat plain on the top of a mountain inaccessible to the foot of man, and surrounded by a golden wall built by Vulcan...." 9 Neither wind nor winter exist, 5 Neilson, pp. 1-17. 6 Neilson, p. 12. 7 Neilson, p. 13. 8 Neilson, p. 14. See Spenser's Two Cantos of Mutability, vi. 37-55. Though not an edifice, there is a similar purpose to that of the Palace of Venus in the protected shrine or garden. The fountain is architectural. 9 Neilson, p. 15. See Spenser's The Faerie Oueene, III. vi. 30-48, and II. xii. 42-87 for the Garden of Adonis and the Bower of Bliss. 5. and flowers bloom while birds sing.10 The palace itself is jewelled.11 12I n* noting these places and edifices, Neilson explains that the palaces were where the allegorical per­ sonifications of abstract ideas lived.