O, For a Sacramental Theater

Signifying God: Social Relation and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays by Sarah Beckwith 2001: University of Chicago Press

The narrow cross-section of scholars dedicated to religious studies, medieval history, performance studies, and theater history will find some fresh ideas in Sarah Beckwith's recent book on medieval drama. It's a worthy addition to a field of academic inquiry that has been popular for some time: investigation into the ever-fertile ground at the crossroads of ritual and drama. Beckwith's skillful treatment of the York cycle—that fifteenth-century model of the sacred joined with the material—makes Catholic sacrament and ritual understandable for a student of the theater; for a student of the sacred, she elucidates the inherently dramatic nature of medieval liturgical practice.

Beckwith chooses as an epigraph words from the anthropologist Mary Douglas: "It is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts." The interplay between symbol and community informs Beckwith's study of the York cycle as she combines an examination of the historical Corpus Christi plays—their function within the social and religious atmosphere of medieval York—with a critical look at modern adaptations of the cycle. The heart of the book, the most well-written and eloquently stated section, revolves around a discussion of the Corpus Christi festival, the symbolic and literal body of Christ, and the essence of what constitutes "sacramental theater." These are the intersections that interest Beckwith most, and this is where the book shines, at once useful and engaging. One wishes, however, that she had started her discussion with a definition of sacramental theater; missing it causes some anxiety, but when it does come, at the beginning of chapter 4, the definition is illuminating. Beckwith writes, "Sacraments were conventionally described as signs of sacred things," visible signs of an invisible divinity. She continues by quoting an excerpt from Hugh of Saint Victor's On the Sacraments of Christian Faith: "A sacrament is a corporeal or material element ... representing by similitude and signifying by institution and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace." The sacramental nature of theater, the links between Christianity and drama of the Middle Ages, begin to crystallize as Beckwith examines the symbolism of the eucharist:

Precisely because sacraments are best understood as actions and not things, it is in the theater of dramatic action that they are best understood. In theater's phenomenality ... sacrament is no longer the little wafer held aloft between priestly hands but strives to fulfill and point toward the host's most ardent and outrageous claims—its most generously utopian aspirations to cause what it signifies, to perform a bond of love in the community of the faithful.

Her adept, succinct analysis in this section helps clarify the complex doctrinal aspects of medieval Christianity for readers.

Beckwith's analysis of the church—not as an institution or monolith, but as a kind of "liturgical performance"—and its creation of and function within community is well wrought. She delves into the neighboring realms of semiotics and performance studies to make assertions about the liminality of the Corpus Christi pageants, as well as the inherent commingling of the church, the marketplace, and the drama within the festival. Chapter 3, "Work, Markets, Civic Structures," follows another interesting line of inquiry: the difference between the labor of man, particularly the York mercantile guilds as they mount the pageants, and the creative power (i.e., nonlabor) of God. Beckwith seeks definitions for "work" and "labor" through the dramaturgy of the cycle, examining the seemingly contradictory presentations of these concepts in regard to the divine hand. She delineates the difference between the creation of the world (which is not "the production of labor") and the creation of man ("the botched-up object of His work"). Beckwith extrapolates the doctrinal implications of what are, in her analysis, hairbreadth differences of definition. Concurrently, she explores at length the implications for political and religious civic forms—an exploration that eventually leads her to a...