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The Recording Demon (III)
Classic Gin
Thursday, 2005-04-21 | Classic Gin
Audiences of the late Middle Ages, accustomed to the very specific theatricality of cycle drama (as observed in York or Wakefield) and the production of morality plays like Mankind by itinerant troupes were thus conditioned to respond to certain aspects of production<97>to a certain set of visual and spoken tropes. Of the cycle plays, Beckwith says that they are <93>a ritual of remembrance orchestrated through a language of festivity that uses physical procession
not just to display a social order but to fight over how it should be made up, how it wanted to be seen and hence remembered.<94> Audiences were conditioned to recognize what we might call a <93>theatricality of commerce;<94> they would have instinctively regarded productions of cycle plays as productions <93>connected to temporal change, spatial configuration, social relations, and political form.<94> This <93>theatricality of commerce<94> had the power to re-form and re-shape the phenomenal world.
In these productions as in the liturgical productions of the period, <93>actors enter into roles<85>[i]n each aesthetic form [e.g. dramaturgy and liturgy], one sign stands for another<94> and thus English audiences of the late Middle Ages would have interpreted the theatricality of both in a fundamentally similar manner, taking actors in a liturgical or dramatic setting as symbols or icons of some noumenal or essential event or entity. <93>Typological time
is thus very different from the modern, linear motion of time<85>[it] implies a much more unusual conception of time as a single, seminal event from a distant past is daily made fully present.<94> Audiences of the late Middle Ages would have been thus trained by the typological logic of the liturgy to regard certain properties and attributes as inextricably linked to this or that historical figure in a manner analogous to the manner by which icons are linked to their distant, otherworldly prototype. Costumes and properties were thus referential as well as symbolic.
<93>In medieval imagery Adam is identified by his spade even when he figures as one of Christ<92>s ancestors in the twelfth-century glass of Canterbury Cathedral, for this symbolised his doom of ceaseless toil.<94> That Mankind defends himself <93>in spadibus<94> against the advances of the nefarious New-G[uise], Nowadays and Nought is a bit of stage business that audiences would have immediately understood as the act of defending oneself against the allure of idle and vain pursuits by keeping one<92>s hands busy with one<92>s trade. Along the same lines, <93>the fact that Titivillus [leads] Mankind to abandon his digging would have implied disobedience to the will of God<94> to audiences of the late Middle Ages.
Mischeff<92>s self-slaughtering noose would have struck a similar chord with audiences of the period who were familiar with the attributes and properties of figures like Mischeff from liturgical art. Mankind declares, <93>A roppe, a rope, a rope! I am not worthy.<94> An obliging Mischeff echoes his diction and promptly supplies a very specific kind of gallows, <91>Anon, anon, anon! I have it here redy, / With a tre also that I have get.<94> When Mischeff produces a halter and a tree, audiences to whom the <93>suicide of Judas Iscariot made death by hanging an accepted symbol of Despair through mistrust of God<92>s infinite mercy<94> would have instinctively understood these properties to imply that Mischeff lead directly to this <93>unforgivable sin from which<94> Mankind can only be saved by Mercy.
Concerning Titivillus and his net then, we can safely conjecture that audiences of the period would have known him as much from his name (announced before his entrance by Mercy, line 301) as from his net. <93>From sermons and edifying books the eavesdropping demon passed into the Towneley Doom Play where he joins the other fiends on the road to the place of final Judgment, carrying his sack over his shoulder.<94> This sack, which appears empty and slung carelessly over his shoulder on the bench at Charlton Mackrell, is the net of Mankind. So far as Titivillus<92> labors are concerned, a sack suits him as well as a net provided that the net is fine enough to prevent the <93>idle chatter, or mumbled devotions<94> that he would have recorded on parchment and placed in it from slipping through and being lost.
Thus we see how contemporary audiences would have had a familiarity with the properties and thus the customary labors of Titivillus well before the actors in any production of Mankind would have even taken the stage. Given this understanding and the fact that the play, as demonstrated above, works to assert the materiality of language, it is therefore safe to assume that the dramatist<92>s decision to include Titivillus in this play is part of the effort observed by Janette Dillon of the dramatist to <93>indicate that the task for the audience, in assessing the words of the speaker, is necessarily a linguistic as well as a moral one.<94> That this task is given to the audience by the dramatist is proven as much by the properties of the play as by the linguistic thrust and riposte of it.
All of this, furthermore, works to <93>prove the word<92>s material emptiness as to demonstrate the spiritual state of the speaker or hearer<94> which works to argue that <93>[t]he right speaker, or the right hearer, has power to reinvest the material fragment with spiritual authority<94> and thus Mankind is marked by a nagging authorial skepticism regarding language that is due to its materiality. This is also apparent when we consider the anxiety regarding material things in general that is obvious from the names of the vices who tempt Mankind to idleness and despair. Language is a material and therefore base vestment in which a speaker chooses to clothe his intentions; a malefactor might disguise his nefarious designs in pleasing language just as a benefactor might clothe his helpful designs in pleasing language. Language nowadays is naught but a guise.
This speaks to an anxiety widespread in the period regarding identity qua outward appearances. It is also consistent with Beckwith<92>s argument that audiences of the period would have understood actors in a liturgical or dramatic setting as types of some otherworldly prototype; actors in drama and liturgy assumed identities which were not their own and it was often uncertain when or if they could/should relinquish those identities. Therefore in ritual and theatrical production <93>identities are changed in ways that persist quite beyond the time of performance,<94> and thus this anxiety regarding identity animates the anxiety in Mankind regarding anything that functions in a material capacity analogous to that in which clothing functions. <93>When a priest has been made a priest, he will not stop being on once the performance of his ordination or his own celebration of mass is over. The costume he wears will denote the totality of his role,<94> and therefore one can only avoid being deceived if he can assess character or intention in spite of costumes, linguistic or habitual.
And so we arrive at the question of whether Mercy must necessarily double as Titivillus. Given the emphasis in Mankind on the materiality of language and the disguising effect of speech that we have observed in the dramatist<92>s decision to cast Titivillus as the superior demon to New-G[uise] Nowadays and Nought, it is clear that the ability to assess character in spite of costume or speech is very much the subject of this didactic drama. It seems unavoidable, given the above, that a clever staging of the play by an insightful director would necessarily feature one actor doubling as Mercy and Titivillus. It has, however, been the purpose of this essay all along to demonstrate that any successful staging of the play depends utterly upon this doubling and there is further evidence within the play itself to prove this.
