Didactic Characterization: The Towneley Abraham

Didactic Characterization: the Towneley Abraham Donna Smith Vinter I An early fourteenth-century vernacular sermon, possibly introduced into a Palm Sunday liturgical procession or more probably, from internal evidence, delivered by a preaching friar “at, or rather outside, a large secular cathedral,”! takes as its voice that of Caiaphas, the high priest.2 Establishing his credi­ bility by assuring his audience that he addresses them under holy auspices, this “Cayphas” invokes the convention of game that V. A. Kolve has demonstrated to underlie the mystery drama. A welsoo]? sawe sojjlich ys seyd Ech god game ys god y-pleyd Louelych & lygt ys leue pe Denes leue and alle manne To rede and synge ar ich go hanne Ich bydde pt J>ou ne greue. (11. 31-36) Richard Axton has singled out this isolated text as an example of “the solo ‘Spiel’ of audience address [which] forms a basic type in the folk tradition” of play-acting.3 If this is an attempt at dramatic impersonation, however, the message of Caiaphas’ sermon is both appropriate and inappropriate to his historical character. He is of course a logical choice to explain Palm Sunday, since not merely was he present at the time, but he also himself made the unwitting prophecy of the redemptive effect of Christ’s death: “You do not understand that it is expe­ dient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish” (John 11.50). Yet he is not the psychological choice. Historically he was one of Christ’s enemies, and the sermon-poem does not attempt to resolve this 117 antinomy by suggesting that he has in any way undergone a conversion: he is in hell. Whar fore ich & annas To fonge Ihesus of Iudas Vor J>rytty panes to paye We were wel faste to helle y-wronge Vor hym J> t for 3011 was y-stonge In rode a gode fridaye. (11. 49-54) A significant attempt is made, however, to locate this Caiaphas in time. After he testifies that he was sent to hell for his part in the crucifixion, he continues: Pe prophecie f?t ich seyde £>ar Ich hit seyde }>o as a star Ich nuste what ich mende Ich wende falslyche jangli ]>o Of me pat wyt naddych no bot as Ihesu sende. ( 11. 61-66) Caiaphas is looking backwards, with a new historical under­ standing of himself. His voice is thus not what it once was, for he now like an obliging narrator explains the old dramatic irony and explicates the hidden meaning of the words which as an unwitting accomplice of the Redemption he formerly spoke. His sermon develops the full penitential meaning of Palm Sunday for the contemporary Christian. We may say, then, that the historical Caiaphas and a more recent, trans-historical Caia­ phas are merged in this game-playing sermon-giver. It is instructive to check the fragment of a medieval homi­ letic or liturgical event against the method of later character­ ization in the English cycle drama. No such gross, didactically motivated violations of historical verisimilitude or psychological probability are to be found there. The opposite is manifestly true. To a greater or lesser degree, the plays flesh out the biblical out­ lines of action and character, drawing on centuries of Latin and vernacular expansions and explications of the holy text. Primarily they fill in and develop what might have been the human motives of the agents, investigating, for example, Joseph’s probable reactions to Mary’s pregnancy. However, it is also true that the mystery playwright had to confront a modified version of the alternatives presented in the Caiaphas sermon. Looking backwards like Caiaphas on the completed shape of the epic story, he would know his character 118 Comparative Drama Donna Smith Vinter 119 first of all in a static and morally determined way—as saved or damned, as a victim or personification of some deadly sin or a hero of some virtue or grace of God. Yet he would also know that character as a participant in an evolving story, and would strive, for didactic purposes, to illustrate the psychological mo­ tives and moral choices...