Signifying God: Social Relations and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Christi Plays (review)

226Comparative Drama Sarah Beckwith. SignifyingGod:SocialRelations andSymbolicAct in the York Corpus Christi Plays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pp. 296, illustrated. $35.00. Sarah Beckwith's Signifying God: Social Relations and Symbolic Act in the York Corpus Chrùti Plays is an important, although in some ways frustrating, new bookbya significant scholar ofmedieval culture, one who applies modern theory to early modern texts. Her full title accurately suggests the book's emphases: "Social Relations" are truly at its center. God as signified, as implied by her main title, functions primarily as an index of social wholeness, fragmentation, or tension. God is a transcendental signifier, and, unlike some critics associated with cultural materialism, Beckwith acknowledges the possibility that real emotional , social, and even spiritual value might inhere in this all-encompassing sign. TheYork Corpus Christi plays themselves are a more tertiary concern. The weighting of these emphases is both the strength and weakness of the book, which often astutely draws upon the semiotics of Wittengenstein (usually mediated through Stanley Cavell) and the theological ideas ofRowan Williams and William Cavanaugh, among others, in order to investigate medieval social relations and how they found expression in Christ's Body in many different ways. In this focus her new book extends her earlier works, Christ's Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (1993) and the collection of essays she coedited, Catholicism and Catholicity: Eucharistie Communities in Hûtoricaland Contemporary Perspectives (2000). It also has obvious connections to other culturally oriented expositions ofthe significance ofreligion in medieval England, most notably David Aers and Lynn Staley's The Powers ofthe Holy ( 1996). Developing upon many ofthe ideas in her first book, here Beckwith focuses upon the multivalent nature ofChrist's body: as corpse, as empty tomb, as Eucharist, as devotional icon, as ritual, as sacrament, as Church, as civic and corporate symbol, as performer (whether priest or actor), and as dramatic performance itself, to tie together the many strands ofthe book. While not attempting to include all ofsalvation history, as the York Corpus Christi plays do, Beckwith does manage to encompass much of the history of York, and—in an enlightening opening chapter, links the revival ofthe plays in 1951 to the Festival of Britain and postwar concerns about British identity. In later chapters, she extends her reach both historically and theoretically. Building on the ideas of Emile Durkheim, Mary Douglas, and Mervyn James, she develops the equation between Christ'sbodyand the socialbody, especiallyas it has manifested itselfinYork. For Beckwith, any staging ofCorpus Christi plays is polysemous, with multiple contexts and stages, sometimes with multiple actors taking on the role ofChrist, while multiple audiences interpret the plays in Reviews227 highlyvariable ways. The ambiguity and multivalency ofmeaning that she postulates circulates most densely around the body of Christ himself, and she focuses in particular on the paradox of a human actor portraying Christ and its possible relationships to the theatricality of the Mass. The book thus goes well beyond theYork Cycle itselfto explore the relationship between the church and theater: both could work in ways she terms "sacramental," and both perform the body oí Christ in various ways. She particularly explores how a human actor portraying Christ could affect the audience's perception ofChrist's presence in the Mass, of their contemporary religious or social context, or of their personal relation to the divine. Perhaps the most interesting section ofher book to theater historians will be chapter 7, in which she looks at how Reformers came to interpret transubstantiation as a "piece de théâtre" (xvii), seeing the dramas as simultaneously demystifying (and desacralizing) the sacramental power of the Catholic Mass even as some ofthe city fathers attempted to sustain the plays for being both sacramental in themselves and for providing authority for traditional religious practice. While this is not a wholly new idea, it is powerfully worked out and applied to York here. For theorists ofperformance and culture, the most provocative chapter will probably be the final one, which circles back to the initial chapter to explore how modern treatments of medieval dramatic themes continue to struggle with issues of culture, religion, and identity. Not all sections ofthe book are equally satisfying...