Modern Saints' Plays

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by The University of Utah: J. Willard Marriott Digital Library MODERN SAINTS’ PLAYS: A HISTORY OF THE GENRE by Jennifer Large Seagrave A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English The University of Utah August 2013 Copyright © Jennifer Large Seagrave 2013 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The following faculty members served as the supervisory committee chair and members for the dissertation of__Jennifer Large Seagrave____________________. Dates at right indicate the members’ approval of the dissertation. Vincent Pecora____________________________, Chair __4/25/2013_____ Date Approved Vincent Cheng____________________________, Member __4/25/2013_____ Date Approved Anne Jamison____________________________, Member __4/25/2013_____ Date Approved Matthew Potolsky_________________________, Member __4/25/2013_____ Date Approved Joseph Metz______________________________, Member __4/25/2013_____ Date Approved The dissertation has also been approved by Barry Weller ______________________ Chair of the Department/School/College of English __________________________. and by Donna M. White, Interim Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT In medieval England, one of the most popular forms of drama was the saint’s play. These plays depicted the lives, martyrdoms, and miracles of Catholic saints. After England’s Reformation most of these scripts were lost due to destruction and censorship. In the nineteenth century, a combination of interest in medieval painting and architecture as well as the Oxford and Decadent movements led to a revival of Catholicism and hagiography. The second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of plays concerning Catholic saints. This project asserts that these plays constitute a new genre, which I name “modern saints’ plays.” I argue that these plays represent a new manifestation of medieval saints’ plays, subject to the conventions of an international modern theater. The project describes the history of saints’ plays as they disappeared from England in the Renaissance and reappeared in the mid-nineteenth century. It analyzes Flaubert’s Temptation of St. Antony and Wilde’s Salome as examples of decadent saints’ plays focusing on the suffering of the saint in a separate spiritual place. An analysis of Maeterlinck’s A Miracle of St. Anthony (1904) provides a stylistic transition to the modern saints’ plays written between the World Wars, which present saints in a critical dramaturgy. The central chapters consider three responses to popular interest in Catholic saints by George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein. The project defines Shaw’s socio-religious critique in Saint Joan, T.S. Eliot’s use of several dramatic traditions to convey his meditation on the conflict between religion and political secularism in Murder in the Cathedral, and Gertrude Stein’s use of literary cubism in Four Saints in Three Acts to demythologize the impressions of saints that fill the modern world. Finally, a discussion of the privatization of religion reveals a new renaissance of saints’ plays in the bountiful DVD offerings of such distributors as the Ignatius Press and the Catholic network, EWTN. I suggest that with this latest iteration of Catholic saints’ plays, the Church attempts to regain control over the spiritual image of saints in a desecularization of the twenty-first century. iv I dedicate this dissertation to Sister Aurelia Joseph and Mr. Christopher Wibberly, formerly of St. James School in Redondo Beach, CA. Without their relentless dedication to grammar tutelage I never could have come so far. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………. viii Chapters I. SAINTS AND SAINTS’ PLAYS: THE ENDURANCE OF ANTIQUITY… 1 The Cult of the Saints…………………………………………………..…. 9 Saints’ Plays …………………………………………………………........ 11 Saints’ Legends …………………………………………………………... 14 Saints as Heroic Supermen………………………………………………... 16 Saints and Social Critique.….…………………………………………….. 18 Universal Saintliness.…………………………………………………..…. 21 Anti-nationalist Saints..………………………………………………........ 23 Modern Saints’ Plays……………………………………………………… 28 II. MEDIEVAL TO MODERN: SAINTS AND SAINTS’ PLAYS FROM THE REFORMATION TO WWI……………………………………………………... 31 The End of Medieval Saints Plays……………………………………..…. 32 A New Medievalism…………………………………………………........ 36 Catholicism and the Oxford Movement...………………………………… 43 Decadence and the Fin de Siècle……………………………….………… 45 The Modern Theater ……….…………………………………………….. 55 III. SHAW’S SUPER(WO)MAN: JOAN OF ARC AND MODERN SAINTS’ PLAYS…………………………………………………………………………... 62 The Convergence of Shaw, Joan and Saints’ Plays..…………………..…. 64 The Superwoman Saint………………………………………………........ 69 The Protestant Saint ……………………………………………………… 74 Brecht and the Victimized Saint..………………………………………… 82 Joan and Saints’ Screenplays.…………………………………………….. 86 IV. ELIOT’S BECKET: RECONCILING CHURCH AND STATE………..….. 92 The Canterbury Festival………………………………………………..…. 94 Making Becket an Everyman…………………………………………........ 97 Models and Scope.………………………………………………………… 101 The Last Temptation…….………………………………………………… 106 Imitatio Christi.…………..….…………………………………………….. 108 Union of Church and State……………………………………………..…. 116 The Right Reasons…....………………………………………………........ 118 V. STEIN, SAINTS, AND STATUES…………………………………...…….... 123 Artists as Saints…………………………………………………….…..…. 125 Cubism……. …………………………………………………………........ 128 Collaboration ……………………………………………………………… 132 Biographical References……………………………………………..….… 135 Libretto vs. Production…… ….………………………………………..….. 141 The Place of the Play…………………………………………………....… 144 What Made What Happened Be What It Was .………………………........ 147 EPILOGUE: A QUIET RENAISSANCE……………………………….…….... 150 America’s Ambivalence……………………….………………………..…. 151 Skeptical Scripts………………………………..…………………….......... 152 The Democratization of Heroes and Saints………………………………... 156 Sainthood and John Paul II………………………………………………… 158 Home Video: The Quiet Renaissance of Saints’ Plays………………….… 160 The Future……………………………………………………………….… 162 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………… 164 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to shower my gratitude on the extraordinary network of mentors, friends, and family who have made this achievement possible for me. I want to thank Vincent Pecora for his encouragement and willingness to let me pursue what interested me, even when it seemed vague and strange. Knowing that I would have his expertise on my side gave me confidence in my efforts. Thank you to Vincent Cheng, whose feedback helped me finish applications, essays, and chapters, even when it meant last minute advice on Christmas Eve. Without the honest guidance of Anne Jamison—even on awful, unedited drafts—I would have been lost, and I pledge her my eternal gratitude. I thank Matthew Potolsky for saving Chapter II and the course in Decadence that nurtured my love of the nineteenth century. And I thank Joe Metz for all the friendly coffee-house and street-corner meetings and for encouraging my pursuit of alternative modernisms, even when it swerved in unexpected directions. I want to offer profuse and sincere thanks to Laura Staich and Philip Ruedi for their loving friendship and undying support through the myriad chapters of my life. Thankfulness doesn’t seem a big enough word for the gratitude I feel toward my family for always loving and believing in me no matter where my convictions have led. And finally for my husband Patrick, whose furtive aid and endurance through all of this has been patient and faithful, I thank God. CHAPTER I SAINTS AND SAINTS’ PLAYS— THE ENDURANCE OF ANTIQUITY “It is very clear from the evidence that subsequently [to 1110 AD] there was a great flourishing of this genre up to the time of the Reformation. Yet very little remains of what was then a healthy tradition of playing the lives and sufferings of the saints on the medieval stage.” (Clifford Davidson, “Middle English Saint Play,” 1986) “Since Dryden’s day no important attempt has been made to picture saints’ lives on the English stage.” –(Gordon Hall Gerould, Saints’ Legends, 1916) How mysterious it is that saints’ plays, the most popular dramatic form of the English Middle Ages, should have been lost to such a degree that we cannot know with any certainty what it was like or even the extent of its popularity. While none but two English saints’ plays have been preserved, we know from records—festival lists, money paid to actors, orders for costumes, props, and other such artifacts—that “at least thirty- eight different saints had at least sixty-six different plays written about them,” and that is “merely the extant tip of an iceberg” (Wasson 241-242). Split roughly into three groups—conversion narratives, miracle stories, and martyrdoms—the most prevalent topic of medieval saints’ plays must have been the miraculous stories of suffering ending in the death of martyrs such as SS. Catherine, Thomas Becket, Andrew, Eustace, Magnus, Lawrence, Susana, James, Stephen, Denis, and Christina. And yet not a single English play of this type survived the Reformation. Scholars tell us that, judging by the few remaining English and Cornish saints’ plays, as well as continental manuscripts, “the 2 protagonists of the saint plays, unlike those of the moralities, are not only

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