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Seeing, hearing and touching the body of Christ are actions repeatedly emphasised in the Resurrection plays of N-town.¹ These physical encounters enact the historical proofs of the Resurrection claimed in the Gospels and in apocryphal narratives. At the same time, they dramatise the difficulty of recognising and believing in these proofs. Many scenes revolve around the moment when a character interprets the evidence of his or her senses and either succeeds or fails to recognise the Resurrected Christ. These moments show the audience that the corporal senses provide only limited, or fallible, understanding. Until they have sufficient faith, the characters are unable to believe that the person standing before them is the Resurrected Christ. But this lesson on the fallibility of the senses and the necessity of faith extends beyond belief in the historical Resurrection re-enacted on the stage. The plays persistently invite the audience to view the Resurrected Christ as a figure of the Eucharist and to affirm its faith in that sacrament - a sacrament that requires belief in the physical presence of the Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine - contrary to the evidence of the senses.

This article examines the dramatic economy and theological sophistication with which the N-town Resurrection plays address the problem of belief. It also compares corresponding episodes in other mystery plays and identifies parallels with theological writings on the Resurrection, the Eucharist and belief.

The dramatic tension in scenes involving the recognition of the Resurrected Christ turns on the unequal knowledge of the audience and the characters on the stage. The N-town dramatist ensured that the audience recognised the central figure on stage as Christ in the flesh by making his first appearance an unequivocal appearance to the audience alone. In Play 35 after the second part of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ is placed in the direct gaze of the audience in an unorthodox but dramatically effective way. N-town is the only English mystery play to split the Harrowing into two parts, the first following the Crucifixion and the second the Burial. Rosemary Woolf argues that this split was made to ensure the audience received theologically accurate information, that only Christ's soul descended into hell while his body remained in the tomb, but considers that the split resulted in "dramatic clumsiness".² This is a reasonable assessment if the dramatic qualities of the second part of the Harrowing are considered in isolation, but an examination of the link that this episode makes into the first Resurrection scene reveals a very successful piece of drama.

The link begins with "Anima Christi", having completed his Harrowing, announcing the resurrection directly to the audience:

The stage directions then instruct Anima Christi to cross the stage to the body of Jesus, which rises and addresses the audience, calling attention to his "flesch... betyn to že bon" (l.79).³ These directions and the allocation of speeches to two distinct personae, "Anima Christi" and "Jesus", indicate that two actors played these roles. Both speakers draw attention to Christ's wounded body, suggesting that Anima Christi's costume lacked the wounds visible on the newly risen Christ.⁴ While the image of the bleeding and wounded body of Christ is central in Resurrection scenes of all the mystery plays, only N-town provides a scene so dense in theological imagery.⁵ Dramatically, Anima Christi, the "Kynge of Glory", rises from Hell to animate and thereby be replaced by the beaten body of Christ as the central visual image. Theologically, the glorious godhead of Christ is no longer visible, subsumed but still present within the physical body of the wounded Christ now standing centre stage.

Other Resurrection appearances to characters on the stage, as opposed to the audience itself, dramatise the difficulty of recognising Christ in both manhead and godhead. The N-town plays are distinctive in their insistence on a physical, sensory interaction with Christ's body as the first step towards this recognition. The characters frequently voice a desire to touch, see or hear the body. As the three Marys walk to the tomb Mary Salomé says, "On žo woundys we wold haue eyn" and Mary Magdalene summarises their devotion as, "We wolde hym towch". Discovering the empty tomb, they grieve that they can not "softyd" Christ's wounds.⁶ The most famous example is Thomas' declaration that he will never believe until he has seen and touched every wound.⁷ These scenes are based on the Gospels, so it is not surprising that similar expressions are found in the other extant mystery cycles. The key difference is that N-town uses the verbs of sensory perception with far greater frequency. For example, the Towneley play, nearly twice as long as N-town, has fewer instances of these words - even including the numerous variations on seeing and touching espoused in the long debate between Thomas and the other apostles, a scene with no counterpart in N-town.

N-town is also unique in depicting moments when the desire to touch, see or hear Christ is realised with physical action. An unusual example takes place in Play 38, when Cleophas and Luke physically restrain Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The use of force is based on Luke 24:19, which reports that the disciples "constrained" ("coegerunt") Christ. Like the English translation, the Latin can either imply physical force or some other form of compulsion, such as repeated entreaties to stay. The latter interpretation is favoured by other English mystery plays. The only echoes of N-Town's interpretation are Cleophas's line in the Shrewsbury Fragment: "Herk, brožer! help to hold him here"⁸ and perhaps in the Holkham Bible where one of the disciples appears to catch hold of Christ's arm.⁹ The surprisingly rough treatment of Christ by the disciples calls attention to the more intimate (and more famous) touching in the following scene, where Thomas places his hand in Christ's wounded side. This simple parallel of two acts of touching Christ's body emphasises the physical evidence that Christ appeared to his disciples in the flesh.

These two scenes also invite allegorical interpretations that prove the divine presence of Christ. Thomas's touching of Christ's wounds was often compared to the Old Testament story of Jacob's mysterious wrestling with the angel. Both were interpreted as instances in which a man held on to God until God was revealed to him.¹⁰ The tussling introduced into the Emmaus scene encourages this allegorical link between Jacob and Thomas and provides further allegorical evidence that Christ is a divine presence. These scenes exemplify the dramatic economy of N-town. There is no need for the long didactic verses of the Towneley Play, in which Thomas debates with the other apostles whether a divine Christ has appeared to them in the flesh.¹¹

The physical presence of Christ is not the first proof of his Resurrection offered to most of the characters. The only people to whom Christ appears first in the flesh are his mother Mary, the soldiers who guard his tomb and, as discussed above, the audience itself. Everyone else is first shown evidence of the Resurrection based on Christ's physical absence, much of it elicited almost comically by Pilate, the character most interested in disproving the Resurrection. He and Cayphas seek to prevent the body being stolen from the tomb by setting a guard and sealing the tomb with wax; the next day the tomb is empty, the seal is broken and the guards are witnesses to the Resurrection. Again, the sealing of the tomb is typical of N-town's dramatic economy and its continuation of the Gospel tradition of providing details that invite allegorical exegesis.¹² Just as a broken seal proves that a letter has been opened, so the broken tomb proves the resurrection of Christ, the Word.

The absence with the most evidentiary value in the Gospels is the empty tomb. The N-town plays depict the Gospel scenes but emphasise the difficulty of interpreting the meaning of the empty tomb. Entering the tomb, John declares:

John's willingness to believe that the physical absence of Christ (the empty tomb, the rolled back stone, the abandoned graveclothes) is sufficient proof of the Resurrection is based on John 20:9 "Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed." St Augustine rejected this interpretation. He asserted that John saw and believed the women's story that the tomb was empty but did not yet believe in the Resurrection. He argued that this is the only sensible interpretation of John 20:10, "For as yet they knew not the scripture, that He must rise again from the dead."¹³ Augustine placed great emphasis on the "oracular proof" of the evidence found at the tomb but, as oracles he considered the proofs divinely mysterious and required the grace of faith to understand.¹⁴

Peter's equivocal reaction to the empty tomb reflects this lack of understanding before faith:

Peter's rational conclusion that the body might have been stolen repeats the falsehood that Pilate sought to disseminate by bribing the soldiers.¹⁵ As Peter's reaction demonstrates, the deception is the more rational interpretation. Peter's doubt, his failure to recognise the truth revealed by the absence or presence of Christ's body, is repeated throughout the N-town plays. Without faith, the characters are unable to interpret the evidence before them correctly and instead devise more logical, but false, explanations for these signs: the body was stolen, the person before them is a gardener or a pilgrim or a ghost. It is striking to compare this with the almost universal faith in the Digby Play of Christ's Burial, in which the actors console each other with reminders that it is the third day and Christ will rise, and Mary Magdalene is scolded for persisting in her grief when she knows that Christ will return. There is no such complacency in N-town. The audience may have privileged knowledge of Christ's Resurrection, but the characters on the stage act out the difficulty of using their human senses and reason to recognise the signs of the risen Christ.

The only character immune from this difficulty of recognition and comprehension is the Virgin Mary. The apocryphal appearance to Mary is not found in any other extant English mystery play but does occur in Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, a key source¹⁶ for the Mary plays of N-Town. If Love was also the source for this appearance, the N-town compiler chose not to follow him closely. In the Mirror, Mary embraces her son, asks him with a mother's concern if his wounds still pain him and begs him to hurry back to see her.¹⁷ This homely affection is severely curtailed in the N-town appearance. After Christ's famous greeting, "Salve sancta parens", Mary greets Christ first as her Lord and grace, and secondly as her son. (When they part, Mary first farewells her son and child and then her Lord and God, mirroring her greeting's significance.) Mary's reaction is the example that the rest of the characters and the audience should emulate: she still expresses love for the man, her son, but this is secondary to the reverence due to her God that she also sees and knows.

Mary's perfect recognition must be compared to the equally devoted but imperfect reaction of Mary Magdalene when Christ appears to her in the garden. Closely following John 20:15-17, Christ asks, "Woman, suche mornynge why doust žu make?" Mary Magdalene's failure to recognise Christ in her terrible grief has a touching humour as she mistakes him for the gardener and asks him, "If žu hym took out of his graue, Telle me qwere I may hym se." He has taken himself out of the grave and she can see him in front of her, but her sense of sight is imperfect and she cannot perceive the truth before her. Instead, it is her sense of hearing that allows her to understand the truth. When Christ calls to her, she immediately recognises him.¹⁸

Mary Magdalene's failure of sight is mirrored in the scene on the road to Emmaus. Cleophas and Luke's sight fails them when they mistake Jesus for a pilgrim. Their hearing is also faulty. They do not recognise Christ as he debates the truth of the Resurrection with them, and they have not believed the women's reports of the risen Christ:

Their doubt is cured when Christ miraculously cuts the bread and disappears before their eyes.

There are no costuming directions in the Resurrection appearances of N-town, so it is not clear whether the actor playing Christ takes up the costume of gardener or pilgrim and involves the audience in the visual confusion of Mary Magdalene and the two disciples. In the visual arts there was a tradition of depicting Christ apparently disguised as a gardener, but not as a pilgrim;¹⁹ in fact in the Holkham Picture Bible it is the two disciples that wear pilgrim garb and not Christ.²⁰ Regardless of costuming, the N-town audience either observe or participate in the constant testing of the senses.

Despite fallibility of the senses, the N-town plays also show that they are a first and necessary step towards recognising the Resurrected Christ. They dramatise the commentary of Augustine on these scenes:

The plays adopt a didactic position similar to that advanced in monastic writings for the instruction of novices which advocated meditation on the human, corporal life of Christ using the imperfect senses as the first step to understanding him. The N-town dramatist might have known of the writings of at least one of these monks, St Bernard of Clairvaux; at the very least, he probably read the summary of St Bernard's teachings contained in Love's Mirror:

A similar viewpoint is advanced by William of St Thierry, who identified three states of religious life: the animal, the rational and the spiritual. "The first state is concerned with the body, the second with the soul, the third finds rest only in God." William counselled contemplation on the corporal life of Christ for those in the carnal stage of knowledge.²³

N-town's concentration on the physical evidence of Christ's Resurrection, particularly the focus of the audience's gaze on the reincarnated body and the physical proofs of the Resurrection, teaches the story of the Resurrection and seeks to banish doubt about its truth in the same way these instructional works advocate teaching to novices. N-town also dramatises the limitations of such a sensory approach to religious knowledge, which is a concern reflected in popular biblical commentaries and devotional texts. For example, reflecting on Mary Magdalene's initial failure to recognise Christ, St Bernard explains the injunction "noli me tangere" as a failure to progress beyond the carnal stage of knowledge:

Discussing Mary Magdalene's initial failure to recognise Christ, Augustine implies that it was due to a lack of faith also caused by a failure to perceive beyond the bodily senses:

N-town portrays this transformation in heart with Mary Magdalene's amazed repetition of the word "opyn" to describe her new found sight and speech (Play 37, ll.65, 75, 82).²⁶

The basic lessons of N-town are aimed at teaching historical belief in the Resurrected Christ via the fallible senses, that is, at the carnal level. However, N-town also aims to teach a more difficult rational and spiritual lesson, actual belief in Christ's presence in the sacrament of the Eucharist. The senses are even more untrustworthy in formulating this belief which requires, instead, an approach based on rational interpretation of signs as figures of divine truth, akin to biblical exegesis.

Although the N-town Resurrection plays seem preoccupied with the image of the physical body of Christ - the "incarnational focus" identified by Gail McMurray Gibson²⁷ - almost constant reference is made to the Eucharist as the figure of Christ's body in the world. The audience is asked to connect the concrete image of Christ's physical body on the stage to its more abstract (but still mysteriously concrete) image in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Resurrected Christ himself makes this connection in his first address:

This is another example of the plays inviting the audience to practise exegesis. This one is less subtle than most but very effective because, whether by accident or design, it invokes the simple prayer that the Lay Folk's Mass Book recommended for the elevation of the host:

Christ also invites the audience to read him exegetically as a symbol of the Eucharist in his debate with the two disciples. He presents the Old and New Testament figures that prefigured his resurrection: Jonah in the whale, Aaron's flowering stick and the raising of Lazarus (Play 28, ll.113-152). It is only a small step in this exegetical tradition to "read" Christ as the figure of himself in the Eucharist. N-town's concerns with presence and absence, with the need for true faith in order to transform sense into belief - these resonate with preaching on how to recognise the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Augustine counselled distrust of the senses and warned that the Eucharist should not be scorned on account of what is seen by "bodily eyes", because what the "eyes behold is transitory, but the invisible reality signified is not transitory but permanent".²⁸

Given N-town's East Anglian provenance and the purported prevalence of Wycliffites and Lollards in that region, it is tempting to read N-Town as a reaction to a rise in heretical critiques of the Eucharist. However, there is no textual basis for such a reading.²⁹ The only mention of heretics is in Thomas' observation:

This merely rehearses the view commonly held in the later Middle Ages that Thomas was blessed since through his doubts the doubts of others may be resolved.³⁰ Even if the heresies to which Thomas referred are against the Eucharist, this could simply reflect the fact that belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist had always been a difficult and controversial belief.³¹

It is still instructive to compare N-Town to other vernacular eucharistic literature produced in East Anglia because the comparison highlights the bold theological sophistication of N-town's teachings. The Play of the Sacrament, like the ever-popular Mass of St Gregory, depicts the host being transformed into the bleeding body of Christ. Love's De Sacramento also relates versions of both the Mass and this tale in his anti-Lollard treatise. These literal tales - in which the mysteriously invisible presence becomes visible as either a gruesome bleeding Host or a cute baby Jesus - are blunt didactic tools. Particularly on the stage, any serious theological message is likely to be lost amid the special effects, the exploding stove and the dismembered arm of the Play of the Sacrament. These versions offer easy proofs based on physical senses. They remove the mysterious beauty of the hidden and true by collapsing the Eucharist into a concrete physical form. The N-Town plays offer no such easy resolutions. The difficulty of perceiving the divine using fallible human senses and reason is dramatised but no solution is offered other than faith. It is remarkable that a literary form wholly reliant on sensory perception, on seeing and hearing actors on a stage, can call into question the reliability of the senses without fatally undermining its own highly persuasive and entertaining message.

Joni Henry

This article is based on an essay submitted for MPhil coursework at the University of Cambridge. I am indebted to the Cambridge Scholarships Commission who made my study at Cambridge possible.

Foreword

Next

NOTES

1. The term "Resurrection plays" is used to refer to Play 33 (Harrowing of Hell - Part I) to Play 38 (Appearance to Thomas). The treatment of the plays as a unit is based on the obvious thematic consistencies. The manuscript evidence also suggests the plays are a unit, with five of the six plays, the exception being Play 38, following immediately after each other, see The N-Town Plays: A Facsimile of British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D VIII, ed. by A.C. Cawley and Stanley Ellis, Medieval Drama Facsimiles, 4 (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1997): fols. 165-109. Stephen Spector, however, considers most of Play 34 to be part of Passion Play II (Plays 29-32) probably incorporated at a later date, The N-Town Play, EETS s.s. 11, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970): 540-541.

2. The English Mystery Plays (Berkeley, LA: University of California Press, 1972), 272-4. York and Towneley (Play 37, ll, 24-5; Play 25, ll.23-4) address the issue by having Christ state that his body remains in the grave before descending to hell. Chester makes no effort to remove the potential confusion (Plays 17 and 18).

3. The stage directions read "Tunc transiet Anima Christi ad resuscitandum corpus, quo resuscitato dicat Jesus."

4. The Holkham Bible also depicts Anima Christi without wounds, see The Holkham Bible Picture Book, ed. by W.O. Hassall (London: Dropmore, 1954): 34. According to Woolf, this depiction was rare: 272.

5. The other plays favour dramatic effect over theological sophistication. Towneley, York and Chester direct the angels to sing "Christus resurgens". From the soldiers' lines, it appears that York also included thunder-claps and frightened soldiers. Chester instructs Christ to step out of the tomb onto the soldiers: "Jesus resurgens et pede eos milites quatiat".

6. N-town, Play 36, ll.31, 36-7, 51-58.

7. Play 38, ll.321-328.

8. "The Shrewsbury Fragments" in Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, ed. by Norman Davis, EETS s.s. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), l.45.

9. Holkham Bible, fol.36

10. Genesis 32. 24-30. This allegorical link is made in the Biblia Pauperum, ed. by Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987): fig.n, 112. See also discussion in Woolf: 281.

11. The Towneley Plays, ed. by Martin Stevens and A.C. Cawley, EETS s.s. 13, 2 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1994): Play 28, ll.273-560.

12. This example supports Alan Fletcher's argument that N-town makes exegesis into a game, "The N-Town Plays", in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. By Richard Beadle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 181.

13. Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John, ed. by Philip Schaff, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicence Fathers, 7 (Madrid: Christian Literature Co, 1888; repr. Michigan: Eerdmans, 1974): Tractate CXX, Chapter XX, passus 9.

14. See O.B. Hardison, Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (Baltimore; The John Hopkins Press, 1965): 228.

15. Play 26, ll.261-304.

16. For the influence of Love's Mirror on N-town, see Richard Beadle, "'Devoute ymaginacioun' and the Dramatic Sense in Love's Mirror and the N-Town Plays", in Nicholas Love at Waseda, ed. By Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle and Michael G. Sargent (D.S. Brewer: Bury St Edmonds, 1997), 1-17: 1-3.

17. Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. by Michael G. Sargent (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005): cap. 50m, 19ff.

18. The scene enacts the primacy of hearing over sight in revealing truth, see also Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs: Vol. III, trans. by Kilian Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series: 7 (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1976): 28:5.

19. On Christ as gardener, see Cynthia Lewis, "Soft Touch: On the Renaissance Staging and Meaning of the 'Noli me tangere' Icon", Comparative Drama, Spring 36:1/2 (2002), 53-73: 55-60. For medieval examples, see Holkham: fol.35v and Biblia Pauperum: fig.L, 108.

20. Holkham: fol.36.

21. "Sermones 116" in Selected Easter Sermons, trans. by Philip T. Weller (St Louis, London: Herder, 1959): 144.

22. Love, Proem, p.10.

23. William of St Thierry, The Golden Epistle: A Letter to the Brethren at Mon Dieu, trans. by Theodore Berkeley, Cistercian Fathers Series 12 (Kalamazoo: Michigan, 1976): I:44; XLIII:174.

24. Bernard, On the Song of Songs, 28:8.

25. Augustine, Homilies, Tractacte CXXI, passus 2. Compare Sarah Beckwith's interpretation that Christ brings Mary to self-recognition, Signifying God (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001): 84.

26. Compare the words of the Centurion: "In trewth, now I knowe wyth ful opyn syght", N-Town, Play.34, ll.1-4.

27. The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1989): 6.

28. Sermones 227, in Selected Easter Sermons: 106.

29. Compare Love's defence of the Eucharist which cites Lollard attacks, "De Sacramento" in Mirror: 223-239.

30. For discussion of Thomas' rehabilitation, see Gibson: 16.

31. See Miri Rubin's discussion of doctrinal debates in the early medieval period and later controversies and heresies, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): 16-34, 320-9.