Early Ramifications of Theatrical Iconoclasm: The Conversion of Catholic Biblical Plays into Protestant Drama

The agenda of the Protestant Reformation included a transformation of the way in which people worshipped by deflecting it away from public spectacle into a more private form that entailed individual prayer and introspection. Residual traces of traditional forms of worship that might jeopardize this complicated task were suspect in view of the magnitude of the change. English iconoclasts therefore considered the removal of sacred images an essential measure for the advancement of the Protestant Reformation. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, supported the iconoclastic campaign; on February 20, 1547, during the coronation ceremony, he called on Edward VI "to see idolatry destroyed . . . and images removed" (Aston 247). The twenty-eighth injunction issued under King Edward VI in 1547 explicitly directed the clergy to "take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry and superstition; so that there remain no memory of the same" (Duffy 480).

Interestingly enough, the images of the same revered figures that were being "pulled down and white-limed" (Nichols 54) from churches and chapels persisted in theatrical performances. One would have expected the same intolerance shown towards the use of sacred images to apply to the representation of similar figures on stage. However, during the 1550s Protestant playwrights continued to present sacred images on stage. I shall here examine the treatment of sacred imagery which allowed it to appear on stage without explicitly calling to mind Catholic worship. The texts to be analyzed as examples are two Biblical plays, one based on a New Testament episode and the other on an Old Testament theme.¹

The continued staging of sacred imagery during the 1550s was, I believe, possible because this imagery was appropriated by and adjusted to the newly reforming culture. Religious plays written during these years were far from "anachronisms of a disappearing tradition . . . written by well-wishing clergymen who were out of touch with the times" (Tucker 110). On the contrary, analysis of the Biblical plays performed during these years suggests that playwrights were highly attentive to the increasing iconoclastic tendencies and the problems surrounding the representation of religious imagery in their plays. The plays I examine in this paper were written and performed well before the establishment of the commercial theatres on the outskirts of London during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Steven Mullaney notes that the plays performed in the marginal "Liberties" of London were "dislocated from the confines of social order of the city" (1988: 8). Plays written for performance within the city, such as those discussed here, were, however, subjected to a closer scrutiny in order to satisfy the demands of the local authorities and, in particular, to meet the constraints imposed by a culture increasingly permeated by Protestant iconoclasm. Examination of these plays will reveal the compromises manifest within them between the calls of the emergent reforming culture and an older theatre of images. I shall argue that these compromises were what helped to prolong the legitimacy of sacred images on the English stage.²

Signs of Compromise: The Life and Repentaunce of Mary Magdalene

Drama written by Protestant playwrights during the 1550s overtly disassociates sacred imagery from Roman Catholicism, concurrently promoting ideals of the new religion. These two features, I suggest, may have been adopted by the Biblical drama of the day in order to legitimize the representation of sacred imagery on stage. Abuse of Catholic liturgy had been a common feature of religious drama during the late 1530s and the 1540s; the most prominent examples can be found in the plays of John Bale (see Farmer 1966 [1907]). While Roman Catholicism was heavily suppressed by national religious policy, parodist abuse of Catholicism continued to be a prominent feature of religious drama.³ Abuse of Catholic practices in religious plays may have served not merely as a means to discredit Roman Catholicism but also as a way to legitimize the representation of sacred imagery which otherwise would have been considered an outlawed relic of pre-Reformation practices.

A second feature of the religious...