1 Working on the audience: Allegorical Strategies in Rhetoricians Plays. Elsa Strietman Most Rhetoricians plays were performed in public for audiences which consisted of fellow Rhetoricians but also of members of the general public. The Chambers of Rhetoric performed in their home towns on occasions of civic and religious feasts or events but were also frequently engaged in drama competitions which took them to other towns in the region or even to other provinces. Competition plays were written on a set theme and could therefore not refer too much to strictly local issues. Non-competition plays might be written for religious festivals or special occasions of local and wider interests: a Royal Entry, a ducal birth, a wedding, a funeral, or the end of a war or the conclusion of a peace treaty. It is safe to say that most of the drama of the Rhetoricians evolves round a disputatio, whether it is to discuss a religious issue, a civic concern, a political question or a moral stance. The Rhetoricians aimed to entertain and, in entertaining, to persuade their audience of the point of view advocated in the text, on the stage. They skilfully used verbal and visual means to that end, in particular verbal and visual allegory in a variety of strategies. One of these was to represent and evoke emotion and thus express a special point of view and persuade the audience of the validity of that view. Another strategy is that of an analysis of a particular question by means of detailed allegorical personifications. The representation of emotion cannot be seen only in terms of didactic convenience and moral efficacy; part of being entertained must surely have been the sharing of an emotional experience. The joys, pains, passions shown 'in action' on the stage were on the whole familiar emotions with which any audience could identify even if the analysis of individual emotions does not seem to have been part of medieval and late-medieval life. Whilst we cannot, for lack of evidence, evaluate the effectiveness of the methods of the Rhetoricians playwrights and actors, we can at least surmise that they must have been felt to be effective as many Rhetoricians plays show a remarkable consistency in the use of allegorical devices. The examples are chosen from a range of plays in Dutch which bear great resemblance to not only the themes but also the methods of the drama of Britain, France and Germany and no doubt to other European traditions.1 1 L.R. Muir, The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) proves this with a wealth of detail in respect of the biblical drama. However, drama that does not go back to biblical sources shows remarkable similarities in sources, in message and in medium. Muir's book has fortunately extended the notion of 'medieval Europe' into the sixteenth century and what is true for biblical drama is also applicable to non-biblical drama. The sixteenth-century drama of the Low Countries is distinct in the very great number of moralities which were written and produced. Their themes and methods however demonstrate that the Rhetoricians are part of a European tradition even though they may have been distinct in their organization and modes of performance. 2 1. An allegorical parable in a non-allegorical play: the tree, the blossom and the falcon in Lanseloet van Denemerken. In the drama of the Low Countries allegory is not confined to Rhetoricians plays and I would like to cite an example from an early play to use this to compare with some illustrative examples from Rhetoricians drama. This will show that the Rhetoricians developed the use of allegory in a remarkably varied and detailed manner for a variety of purposes, prominently so to express emotions and to evoke an emotional rapport with the audience. In all this it must be remembered that we cannot ascribe their efforts to a desire to achieve psychological verity but rather a pursuit of inescapable conviction: allegory as a weapon of mass persuasion. The following example is taken from Lanseloet van Denemerken, one of four, late fourteenth-century, serious plays, the Abele Spelen. In these a range of human emotions is presented in the context of secular plots resembling those of the medieval romances. Love relationships are central to these plays and they are used, broadly speaking, to show the unbalancing effects of misguided, mismatched love and, by contrast, the harmony resulting from well-matched relationships.2 In Lanseloet van Denemerken the lady Sanderijn becomes the victim of Lanseloet's passion and the venomous interference of his mother who deems her of far too lowly descent to become the wife of her high born son. When she finds herself in a situation which might hold the promise of a new life, she is far too ashamed and frightened to explain to her new would-be suitor that she has been raped and abandoned. The disclosure of her history is a matter of life and death. If her suitor is put off by her 'imperfect' state, he may not convert his sexual pursuit of her into an offer of marriage and for Sanderijn marriage is her only chance of moral as well as physical survival. She resorts to indirectness and paints a picture in words: if a tree were in full blossom but a noble falcon would come and rob it of some of its blossoms, would the tree therefore be worthless and damaged beyond redemption? Tree, blossom and falcon form the parts of an allegorical structure in which an event and its potential consequences are set out for consideration. It is not a moral allegory but an imagistic emotional appeal.The passage is a masterpiece of emotional delicacy structured as a continuous rhetorical question which does not invite debate but a re-assuring answer which, indeed, is given by the lover who sustains the metaphor. Thus this non-allegorical play creates an allegorical tactics to resolve something. Interestingly, the allegory does two things simultaneously. The spectators had been left in no doubt about Lanseloet's brutal physical and verbal attack on Sanderijn. They now hear that event elegantly allegorised in her parable whilst Sanderijn's new suitor hears the parable reveal the harsh reality of her experience. The parable conveys and evokes several emotions, disgust, compassion, tenderness, in a formulaic, though extremely poignant, manner. The characters themselves are not allegorical but presented as types: the nobly born but weak lover, the innocent girl, the venomous mother. Emotions are manifested and represented in a manner which the contemporaries clearly deemed suitable for the stage. In 2 See also Annelies van Gijsen, 'De dramatisering van begeerte en vrees', in R.E.V. Stuip and C. Vellekoop, Emoties in de Middeleeuwen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1998), pp. 157-182, who discusses the implications of the portrayal of emotions relating to love in several texts, amongst which the French and Dutch versions of the story of Narcissus and Echo and the late fifteenth-century Spiegel der Minnen, all belonging to a group of older rhetoricians plays known as the 'amourous plays'. 3 the case of this play ideas are conveyed about the importance of the suitability of partners in marriage. There is a strong, implicit, warning here that incompatibility of wealth, rank and status might result in disharmony: in a family, in a community and, if it affected royalty, in a realm. 2. The battle for the soul of mankind 2.i. Die Eerste Bliscap van Maria One of the central concerns in fifteenth-century drama was the battle for the soul of mankind, a battle which often involved the mediation of Our Lady. Mariolatry and affective piety had by then a long history in the Low Countries and had freed the way for a strongly emotional approach to mankind's relationship with the divine, which is testified in religious literature as well as in the visual arts. I will for the moment disregard the chronology of the plays and simply order them according to the length of the discussion. They provide examples of allegorical structures which either facilitate or allow a manipulation of emotion geared towards evoking in the audience the fear of God, pity for the plight of His mother and His Son, and ultimately instilling remorse and penitence. In the mystery play Die eerste bliscap van Maria allegory is not extensively employed. It does however contain a version of the well-known Debate between the Four Daughters of God. This is an episode which is central to what Lynette Muir has called 'the play of God' and variations of it can be found in abundance in medieval European drama as well as in many non-dramatic texts.3 The purpose of the debate as well as its participants and its outcome are of course broadly the same in many of the texts. It would be misleading to claim the rhetorical crafting and the structuring of emotional tension in the version in Die eerste bliscap as particularly belonging to or characteristic of the Low Countries. Nevertheless, this is an example in which a complex rhetorical, allegorical structure with allegorical personifications is employed most effectively to express and evoke emotion. The audience needs to be persuaded of the unimaginable sacrifice, for their benefit, demanded of the Son of God. All attempts at finding an angel prepared to suffer the passion for the sake of mankind are shown to have failed and the attention then switches to the only other obvious person, Christ. The overwhelming fear when he learns of his impending fate foreshadows the words on the Cross and demonstrates palpably the human side of the Son of God: Why is it that justice demands That I will have to suffer for this, That I will have to open that which Adam closed, With torments and with suffering More than he should? Mark my words, Holy Spirit, I ask you that, You who are as powerful as we are.