Drama without Performance and Two Old English Anomalies

The history of drama in England has customarily been traced back to the apparent enactment of a Latin text, the Visitatio sepulchri, in the second half of the tenth century. Vernacular drama has been tracked to the twelfth century, as typified by the Anglo-Norman Le Mystère (or Jeu) d’Adam. While recitative and mimesis likely accompanied storytelling in Old English, the Anglo-Saxon period is considered devoid of any vernacular drama. As M. Bradford Bedingfield points out, the words Anglo-Saxon and drama are rarely linked.¹

Anomalies in Old English literature, two dialogues within the first work of the Exeter Book closely resemble in structure the Visitatio sepulchri. Despite this correspondence, these works, unlike the Visitatio, are not marked for performance. It is, however, because of this comparability that I argue here that drama as a literary form does exist in Old English, if drama is also defined in terms of text alone, rather than just performance. My argument will begin with a discussion of what constitutes medieval drama. I will analyze the feasibility of also defining drama strictly in textual terms from the perspectives of medieval European drama scholarship and performance studies. After a close examination of these dialogues, I will show the structural parallels with the Visitatio. Finally, with my reassessment of certain texts as dramas, I will draw the resultant implications for the history of medieval English drama.

I

Andrew Hughes speaks for many who contend that performance is essential for a drama “to achieve its full impact.”² Sheila Lindenbaum asserts that medievalists have for a long time been preoccupied with performance because of their belief that it “accesses behavioral regimes and other intangibles of medieval culture which a text cannot convey.”³ Thus, medieval dramatic texts that are marked for performance are commonly anthologized as dramas, while comparable texts without any indication of enactment are marginalized and relegated to the merely dramatic category. They are excluded from the canon of dramas. Such works are commonly described, sometimes pejoratively, as “reading texts,” “play texts,” “dramatic scripts,” “liturgical observances,” or “closet dramas.”

Such a differentia begs the question of what actually constitutes drama. This question has long vexed students of the Middle Ages. When is a creative work transformed from cult, ritual, or even other literary forms into a drama? For drama editor David Bevington, the search for a precise answer is “a baffling quest.”⁴ Some scholars have answered this question, in part, by refraining from using the word “drama” to refer to certain early dramatic works. Contrasting them with the dramas of a few centuries later,⁵ Bedingfield believes that “dramatic ritual” is a more appropriate nomenclature.⁶ Lawrence M. Clopper distinguishes “liturgical representations” from dramas.⁷ While Michal Kobialka prefers “representational practice,”⁸ Nils Holgar Petersen considers “devotional biblical representation,” or some very similar descriptor, a more adequate identifier than “liturgical drama.”⁹

The evidence of performance requirement recalls the different conditions of extant medieval manuscripts, which, in turn, incites Carol Symes to ask, “How many plays have escaped notice because they have been deprived of their apparatus by careless copyists?”¹⁰ I contend that performance as the chief discriminator is also inadequate because it focuses upon what is extrinsic to the dramatic text. The text of a drama and its performance, albeit often seen as interdependent, are ultimately discrete entities. To expand the dramatic canon—beyond those dramas known through their enactment—so that it is more representative, there must be a rethinking of how a particular text, independent of performance, can also be a drama. Clearly there is a precedent for this in how other genres with performance qualities are identified. A lyric text, for example, is recognized as a lyric whether or not it is performed or marked for performance.

Certain literary elements are intrinsic to the texts of individual dramas and separate from performance, although they might guide enactment. Gerald F. Else points out that the title characters of Shakespeare’s Othello and King Lear are, irrespective of any costuming, necessarily a blackamoor and an old king, respectively:

The concept...