 |
version seven. http://demongin.org |
Syndicated: I
Classic Gin
Wednesday, 2006-04-12 | Classic Gin
This theatricality is a consequence, in the liturgical drama of the earliest Middle Ages, of the fact that audiences were already familiar with whatever story a dramatist might choose to dramatize: the best way to keep the drama lively is to use the dramatic action of the play to mislead the audience, if only momentarily. This theatricality has its beginnings in liturgical drama and migrates, through the morality tradition, across the ocean and into the Nahuatl Final Judgment. It is important to this dramatic tradition that death takes the play's protagonist by surprise and though Lucia's lines confirm this, it behooves us to consider how the scene of surprise might be staged: such a consideration will allow us a firmer grasp on the meaning of the play.
In the Nahuatl play, we're lead to briefly think that, in spite of what the angel Michael and the play's personifications have already told us, the play's protagonist might have a chance at avoiding damnation. Lucia, once she recovers from the shock that the end is upon her, decides that she's at least got to try to avoid damnation. "What shall I do now?" she wonders, "I shall go and confess!" (p. 147).
A considerate director would, at this point, instruct his Lucia to move rapidly from panic to consternation and then, finally, to a paroxysm of hopefulness. For the drama to really effect us, we have to believe that she believes that she has got a chance and that her last great hope of salvation might not be in vain. We need to see the light bulb go on over her head. She must carry the optimism that this brainstorm inspires within her to her confessor.
When Lucia proceeds to her confessor, he is optimistic: "you make me very happy. I am listening to what is troubling you and afflicting you: that is, your sins," he says (p. 148). His optimism, in spite of the fact that the world has already ended before Lucia has come to make her confession, should contribute to our growing sense that she might escape damnation. If we are mislead, during the performance of these lines, into believing that she might surviv
e the final judgment, the lines that follow will have a much more profound effect upon us. When the priest does an abrupt volte face and tells Lucia that she deserves "the torments of the infernal regions," our hearts should sink with hers even as we remember that we always knew that she never had a chance because we were told as much during the preliminary exposition (p. 148). These lines, because they are the legacy of the traditional scene of surprise, ought to be directed in just such a way.
Most importantly, however, is that the scene of surprise must end with a confirmation of the importance of the play's secondary theme. The secondary theme of The Final Judgment is marriage, and Lucia's scene growing hopefulness is checked and her scene of surprise ends when the priest asks, "[w]hy have you not accepted the seventh Sacrament, holy matrimony? It is all over!" (p. 148).
Similarly, in Sponsus we are shown the final, desperate moments of The Foolish as the end of the world takes them by surprise and they scramble to make amends. Taken by surprise as they have been, they first pursue the wrong remedy, then they pursue the correct remedy from the wrong people and, just before they realize what they must do, time runs out and they are "hurled into hell" (line 89). In this way, we see that the narrative structures of the two plays are identical: the scene of surprise is followed by a vain attempt to make amends. This vain attempt is followed by the reintroduction of the play's secondary theme and, finally, by the judgment and the damnation of the protagonist.
And while the narrative of Sponsus is clear, the central, guiding metaphor of the play is not explained by any of the play's speakers and therefore may not be immediately comprehensible to modern readers and the vain attempt to make amends might easily be misunderstood (or not understood at all). A good understanding of the play's use of oil and light as metaphors for mortality and works will help us understand where exactly the dramatic action of the play lies and how the play is in sync with other, later, traditional dramatizations of the end of the world.
