The Medieval European Stage: 500-1550 (review)

Reviews William Tydeman, ed. The Medieval European Stage: 500-1550. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. lxii + 720. $140.00. This invaluable book belongs to a series ofcollections ofprimary source materials intended to provide reference documents for teachers and scholars in theater studies, under the editorial supervision of Glynne Wickham, John Northam, and W. D. Howarth, published by Cambridge University Press. The series includes volumes on Restoration and Georgian England, Northern and Eastern Europe of the years 1746 to 1900, German and Dutch Theater in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Naturalism and Symbolism in the European Theater of 1850 to 1918, French Theater of the Neoclassical Era (15501789 ), and English Professional Theater ofthe Renaissance. To this impressive list is now added a large and comprehensive volume on the Medieval European Stage from 500 to 1550. William Tydeman has assembled a distinguished list of contributing editors . In the first place, Nick Davis has put together materials on "The Inheritance ," presenting us with early documents and artifacts such as a bronze figure ofsecond-centurySyria in the pose and costume ofamime, sixth-centurywarnings to the clergy not to attend spectacufo under any circumstances, images from an eleventh-century manuscript ofTerence's The Eunuch vividly portraying a tricky female servant and a comic slave as imagined in that era, Isidore of Seville's speculations on Roman theatrical spaces as guessed at in the seventh century, and a narration ofa ninth-century representation ofthe Harrowing of HeU that intersperses dialogue with narrative description in a manner that may have been sung by a choir and soloists or may simply have been designed for private devotional reading. Cumulatively, the selections provide us with numerous iftantalizing glimpses oflong-lost dramatic activity during the centuries when drama was officially banned from the Roman Empire. As in the rest of the volume, the materials are richly varied: proclamations, epitaphs, other inscriptions, statements by Hrotswitha and others on their purpose in writing, extracts from her plays, observations by Aquinas, and much more. 445 446ComparativeDrama Peter Meredith's section on Latin liturgical drama carefully demonstrates to us how the Visitatio sepulchri and other such ceremonies were not selfcontained dramas complete in themselves but artifacts needing to be seen in their liturgical context. Acknowledging O. B. Hardison's work in reconstructing the neo-Darwinian myth ofevolutionary development from smaller to greater and simple to complex, Meredith groups many ofhis documents, as a matter of convenience, under the ceremonies for Holy Week, Easter Week, and Christmas , but without implications as to priority and with arrangement that is usually quite irrespective ofdate. Amalarius ofMetz and Honorius are on hand to attest to the same churchmen's interest in the dramatic potential to the liturgy; on the other hand, Gerhoh of Reichersberg and others speak in opposition to theatrical spectacle in church. The ceremonies, presented in all their detailed attention to matters ofstaging, movement, costuming, and gesture are eloquent testimonials to a liturgy of a high dramatic potential. Clearly printed illustrations show us a Palmesel from Steinen in Switzerland indicating what the figure of Christ mounted on an ass could look like in a Palm Sunday procession; diagrams showing the placement around the altar of officiating priests, deacons , acolytes, cross- and candle-bearers, etc., for the"station"ofthe blessing of the palms on Palm Sunday in a Sarum Processional, and for the "station" ofthe blessing ofthe pascal candle also from a Sarum Processional, and Easter Sepulchre structures from Lincoln and Konstanz. Account lists itemize the artifacts needed for a Palm Sunday or Good Friday ceremonial, and the costs of each item or preparation. The ceremonies themselves make plain that what we would recognize as mimetic representation was by no means confined to the texts (from Fleury and Benediktbeuern, for example) that we read as plays. Dramatic presentation was to be found everywhere at Easter and at Christmas. An office of the Three Kings might be attached to the celebration ofMass on Epiphany, as at Rouen in the fourteenth century when, after their coming together from three directions in front of the altar, "at Mass the three Kings rule the choir" (9). These ceremonials are quite separate from the rest ofthe Christmas (or Easter) story...