Poised at the Threatening Edge: Feeling the Future in Medieval Last Judgment Performances

The persistent interest in the Apocalypse suggests a compelling human desire to see and seek The End. Throughout history, Christian communities have used live performance to fulfill that desire, with Last Judgment plays from the Middle Ages supplying rich examples of this tradition. These medieval performances provide opportunities to build on current scholarship on fear, while also expanding how Christian End Times plays are understood as sites for emotional production. Various scholars have discussed the ways in which medieval plays depicting Christ’s Passion may have been used to cultivate compassion, pity, or empathy, usually through the visual and material presence of Christ. Alternatively, Last Judgment plays may reveal a dramaturgical mode—a dramaturgy of threat—in which the power of absence was used to provoke a different feeling and, in doing so, to construct a specific kind of emotional community. This essay argues that producers of medieval Last Judgment plays used this dramaturgy of threat to foster anxiety that would leave all spectators, regardless of social status, feeling vulnerable to the reality of the End. Moreover, although this dramaturgical approach is perhaps most evident in Christian End Times performances, it may also have applications in other contexts where the goal of a performance is similarly to bring a prewritten future into felt reality.