HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''The Digby Conversion of Saint Paul'' (or ''The Conuersyon of Seynt Paule'') is a
Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...
miracle play Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the represe ...
of the late fifteenth century. Written in
rhyme royal Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuin ...
, it is about the
conversion of Paul the Apostle The conversion of Paul the Apostle (also the Pauline conversion, Damascene conversion, Damascus Christophany and the "road to Damascus" event) was, according to the New Testament, an event in the life of Saul/Paul the Apostle that led him to ce ...
. It is part of a collection of
mystery plays Mystery plays and miracle plays (they are distinguished as two different forms although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the represe ...
that was bequeathed to the
Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second ...
by Sir
Kenelm Digby Sir Kenelm Digby (11 July 1603 – 11 June 1665) was an English courtier and diplomat. He was also a highly reputed natural philosopher, astrologer and known as a leading Roman Catholic intellectual and Blackloist. For his versatility, he is ...
in 1634.


The Play

The action is in three well-defined parts, often, following medieval practice, referred to as "stations". Each of these stations is introduced and concluded by "Poeta" (
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
for poet). The first station represents
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. After the
prologue A prologue or prolog (from Greek πρόλογος ''prólogos'', from πρό ''pró'', "before" and λόγος ''lógos'', "word") is an opening to a story that establishes the context and gives background details, often some earlier story that ...
there follows a dance, the direction for which has been added in by a later hand, seemingly in an attempt to make the piece more exciting.''Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas'' edited by Joseph Quincy Adams,
Houghton Mifflin Company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Boston Financ ...
, 1924
The play proper begins with
Saul Saul (; he, , ; , ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel. His reign, traditionally placed in the late 11th century BCE, supposedly marked the transition of Israel and Judah from a scattered t ...
, dressed in rich apparel, boasting of his power and of the fear which he inspires, doing so "a little in the Herod style".''Ancient Mysteries from the Digby Manuscripts'' edited by Thomas Sharp, printed for the Abbotsford Club by the Edinburgh Printing Company, 1835 The priests Caypha and Anna give him letters to take to
Damascus )), is an adjective which means "spacious". , motto = , image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg , image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg , seal_type = Seal , map_caption = , ...
, where he is to suppress heresy (i.e. the worship of Jesus). Saul then gathers together his knights and servants, who agree to follow him. There follows a comic scene, not present in other versions of the Conversion, between one of Saul's servants and an
hostler A hostler or ostler is a groom or stableman, who is employed in a stable to take care of horses, usually at an inn. In the twentieth century the word came to be used in railroad industry for a type of train driver. Etymology The word is spelled ...
, who ready a horse which Saul then rides off on. Poeta re-enters to "mak a conclusyon" of this first station, and again the stage direction "daunce" has been written in a later hand. In the next station, on the road to Damascus,
God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
, amidst thunder and lightning, visits Saul and rebukes him for persecuting His followers and tells him to enter Damascus. When the visitation is over Saul finds that he is blind and lame. God also visits Ananias, an inhabitant of Damascus, and tells him to go and cure Saul, assuring him that from now on Saul will advance, rather than persecute, Christianity. As Ananias visits Saul the
Holy Spirit In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as ...
appears above them, and Saul is healed and
baptised Baptism (from grc-x-koine, βάπτισμα, váptisma) is a form of ritual purification—a characteristic of many religions throughout time and geography. In Christianity, it is a Christian sacrament of initiation and adoption, almost inv ...
. In the third station Saul's knights have returned to Jerusalem, where they tell an angry Caypha and Anna of Paul's conversion to and preaching of Christianity. At this point three leaves have been inserted in a different hand. They make up a comic scene between the demon
Belial Belial ( he, , ''Bəlīyyaʿal'') is a term occurring in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament which later became personified as the devilSee the reference to "Beliar" in ''The Ascension of Isaiah'', at EarlyChristianWritings.com', specifically at 1 ...
(whose first line is "the usual Satanic exclamation of the mystery writers 'Ho ho'") and his messenger, named Mercury. Again, Joseph Quincy Adams believes this has been included to make the play more exciting. The choice of Belial as the chief demon seems to have been influenced by Saul's swearing "By the god Bellyall" in his first scene. The interpolated text also contains material that could be seen as
anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...
and which is not mirrored in the main text – Belial claims that he is worshipped "In the temples and synogoges" and that Caypha and Anna are his "prelates" and are planning to persecute Saul on his suggestion. Heather Hill-Vásquez, however, interprets Caypha and Anna (in the 16th-century version) as standing for
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
bishops A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...
and their link to Belial as a
Protestant Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and i ...
attack on the old religion in a play that is an appropriation of one of its forms of dissemination, the (processional) Saint play.''Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in the Middle English Religious Drama'' by Heather Hill-Vásquez,
Catholic University of America Press The Catholic University of America Press, also known as CUA Press, is the publishing division of The Catholic University of America. Founded on November 14, 1939, and incorporated on July 16, 1941,Roy J. Deferrari ''Memoirs of the Catholic Univer ...
, 2007
The play proper resumes with Saul (the play does not include his renaming as Paul), now dressed as a disciple of Jesus, delivering to the audience a rather lengthy sermon on the
Seven Deadly Sins The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings. Although they are not directly mentioned in the Bible, there are parallels with the seven things ...
. Saul is taken to Caypha and Anna, who order the gates of the city to be locked that they might kill him shortly. However, an angel appears and tells Saul that he will not die yet, and that a place for him in heaven is assured. Saul's escape from the city in a basket is described, not staged. The play ends with Poeta inviting the audience to sing the
hymn A hymn is a type of song, and partially synonymous with devotional song, specifically written for the purpose of adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification. The word ''hymn'' ...
''Exultet caelum laudibus''. While Scherb praises the swift ending and finds its reliance on words rather than images appropriate to the play's thematic focus on faith and the movement from iconography to rhetoric, Coldewey simply finds it abrupt.


Scholarship

The text of ''The Conversion of Saint Paul'' is one of five plays (one a fragment) bound together in MS Digby 133, which is preserved in the
Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford, and is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. It derives its name from its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second ...
, having been bequeathed to it by
Sir Kenelm Digby Sir Kenelm Digby (11 July 1603 – 11 June 1665) was an English courtier and diplomat. He was also a highly reputed natural philosopher, astrologer and known as a leading Roman Catholic intellectual and Blackloist. For his versatility, he is ...
in 1634. Though critics sometimes write of a "Digby playwright" (particularly when examining the ''Conversion'' alongside the ''Mary Magdalene'', the other surviving English Saint play derived from the
New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christi ...
), the pieces are in fact independent;''Early English Drama: an anthology'' edited by John C. Coldewey,
Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, an ...
, 1993,
though the plays' first modern editor, Thomas Sharp, sees in the ''Conversion'' "a considerable resemblance in general structure and composition to 'The Digby Massacre of the Innocents'' The plays date from the late fifteenth century and have a transcription date of 1512 on the first page.''Mediæval Drama'' by A. M. Kinghorn, Evans Brothers, London 1968''The Digby Mysteries'' edited by F. J. Furnivall, New Shakspere Society/N. Trübner & Co., 1882 As well as the ''Conversion'' and '' The Digby play of Mary Magdalene'' there are plays on the Massacre of the Innocents and the resurrection of Jesus, and an incomplete version of the
morality play The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
''
Wisdom Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge ...
'' entitled ''Wisdom, Who is Christ''. Adams believed the play to have been written by an author from the East Midlands, to be performed at stations in a small village on 25 January, that being the Festival of the Conversion of St. Paul. And while A. M. Kinghorn has it that the play was performed in a fixed locality and was the responsibility, not of the town's guilds, but of the church;
Glynne Wickham Glynne William Gladstone Wickham (15 May 1922–27 January 2004) was a British Shakespearean and theatre scholar. Life Wickham was born in Cape Town, and was the great-grandson of William Ewart Gladstone. He was educated at Winchester College and ...
, citing the text's many apologies for its "simpleness", argued that the play, in its final form at any rate, belonged "to a Guild of artisans who were willing to travel and to adapt their script and presentation to the environment offered by their sponsors and hosts in exchange for hospitality and a small fee" and thus, while the Digby plays may have originated, like the so-called Macro plays – ''
The Castle of Perseverance ''The Castle of Perseverance'' is a c. 15th-century morality play and the earliest known full-length (3,649 lines) vernacular play in existence. Along with '' Mankind'' and ''Wisdom'', ''The Castle of Perseverance'' is preserved in the Macro Man ...
'', ''
Mankind Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
'', and ''
Wisdom Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge ...
'' –, in or near
Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton ...
in
East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in wh ...
,''English Moral Interludes'' edited by
Glynne Wickham Glynne William Gladstone Wickham (15 May 1922–27 January 2004) was a British Shakespearean and theatre scholar. Life Wickham was born in Cape Town, and was the great-grandson of William Ewart Gladstone. He was educated at Winchester College and ...
,
Everyman's Library Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent (itself later a division of Weidenfeld & N ...
, 1976
they were able to migrate to
Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London at ...
in the 16th century. Furnivall could see little in the play that pointed to a specific dialect, other than a few instances that inclined him more to a
Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Mercia, Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in ...
dialect than anything else. A later editor, Coldewey, described the dialect as East Anglian, though note that the East Midlands border on East Anglia. Sarah Salih has speculated that '' The Book of Margery Kempe'', written in East Anglia, could have provided inspiration for the Digby plays of conversion, that is the ''Conversion of Paul'' and the ''Mary Magdalene''. The interpolations to the original text (the marginal "daunce" stage directions and the three leaves containing the scene between the devils) seem to come from an early sixteenth-century revival of the piece, and were possibly the work of a man named Myles Blomfylde (whose exact identity is unclear), who may have played the role of Poeta. The play was not much admired by its 19th- and early 20th-century editors: Furnivall wrote that it (and the Digby mysteries as a whole) pointed to "the decay of the old religious Drama in England" and Manly found it "uninteresting" and of only historical value. Adams has sympathy with the later author's attempt to introduce more excitement to the piece and goes so far as to omit almost entirely Saul's long sermon on the Seven Deadly Scenes on the grounds of its having "no dramatic value". For Chester N. Scoville, however, it is just this sermon, rather than Saul's actual conversion, that is at the heart of the play.''Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama'' by Chester Norman Scoville,
University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press founded in 1901. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university cale ...
, 2004
In this Scoville is typical of late 20th- and 21st-century critics, who have found richness in the play and, in its unclear staging, strategies for interpretation.


Staging

The play's earliest editors all agreed the original production would have been of the processional sort, with a wagon travelling between three different stations to perform the three scenes of the play, and the audience following, rather as they would performing the Stations of the Cross. The need to accommodate a horse must have meant that the wagon would be fairly large, and with an upper story in order for the Holy Spirit to appear above and from which thunderbolts could be thrown. Lines in Saul's sermon – "thys semely ssemblythat here syttyth or stonde" – led scholars to conjecture that a scaffold may have been erected for this and perhaps other stations. It was not until the 1970s that Glynne Wickham, first in an essay and then in his edition of the play, challenged this conception, arguing that the three stations had taken the form either of mobile "pageants" or fixed "mansions" grouped together on a single acting area, or "platea". As William Tydeman points out, much hinges on how one interprets "processyon" in line 157 – as referring to a physical procession, or to the procession of the stage action. As this line is part of a passage marked "si placet" (i.e. optional) in the text, Wickham believes it hardly likely to have been a direction to the audience, and that it should be interpreted, along with "proces" in line 9 and 14, as signifying the thrust of an argument, and not physical movement. In his edition of 1993, Coldewey takes up a revisionist stance, believing that the play was processional in nature and clearly unconvinced by Wickham's argument. Victor I. Scherb, taking the processional staging as read, builds from it an interpretation that sees the play as a theatrical
triptych A triptych ( ; from the Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided ...
that uses framing devices which serve to draw the audience's focus on the central scene, that of Saul's conversion. This station is framed spatially not only by the procession, but also in terms of "high" and "low", thanks to scenes involving God, devils and ostlers. Indeed, the ostler with ideas above his station being seen thrown in dung is taken as a reflection of Saul's own pride, for which he is cast down on the road to Damascus. The purpose of these devices is to provide the audience – turned, thanks to the amount of direct address in the play, into a congregation – with a spiritual model of the turning away from worldliness.


Performances

For the 1982 production at
Winchester Cathedral The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity,Historic England. "Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (1095509)". ''National Heritage List for England''. Retrieved 8 September 2014. Saint Peter, Saint Paul and Saint Swithun, commonly known as Winches ...
the stage direction "daunce" was interpreted as a means of moving the audience across stations.''Staging Faith: East Anglian Drama in the Later Middle Ages'' by Victor I. Scherb,
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (FDU Press) is a publishing house under the operation and oversight of Fairleigh Dickinson University, the largest private university in New Jersey, which has international campuses in Vancouver, British Columb ...
, 2001
''The Digby Conversion of St. Paul'' was also performed in 1994 by Poculi Ludique Societas in Toronto.Past productions
/ref> In November 2000, The Marlowe Project, a production company devoted to early theatre, performed ''The Conversion of Saint Paul'' at the Church for All Nations in New York City. The text was modernised and slightly adapted by director Jeff Dailey, who also wrote about the problems performing the play in his article, "Saint Paul's Horse and Related Problems" in the 2001 edition of ''Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama.''


See also

*
Acts of the Apostles The Acts of the Apostles ( grc-koi, Πράξεις Ἀποστόλων, ''Práxeis Apostólōn''; la, Actūs Apostolōrum) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message ...
the primary source for the play * '' Conversio Beati Pauli Apostoli'' a
liturgical drama Liturgical drama refers to medieval forms of dramatic performance that use stories from the Bible or Christian hagiography. The term was widely disseminated by well-known theater historians like Heinrich Alt (''Theater und Kirche'', 1846), E.K. ...
about the conversion of Paul * ''Paul'' a 21st-century dramatisation of the story by
Howard Brenton Howard John Brenton FRSL (born 13 December 1942) is an English playwright and screenwriter. While little-known in the United States, he is celebrated in his home country and often ranked alongside contemporaries such as Edward Bond, Caryl Church ...


Editions

* ''Ancient Mysteries from the Digby Manuscripts'' edited by Thomas Sharp, printed for the Abbotsford Club by the Edinburgh Printing Company, 1835 : : * ''The Digby Mysteries'' edited by F. J. Furnivall,
New Shakspere Society The New Shakspere Society was founded in autumn 1873 by Frederick James Furnivall in order "to do honor to Shakspere, to make out the succession of his plays, and thereby the growth of his mind and art; to promote the intelligent study of him, and ...
/N. Trübner & Co., 1882 : : * ''Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, Vol. 1'' edited by John Matthews Manly, Ginn and Company, Boston, 1897 : : : : : * ''The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and E. Museo 160'' edited by Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy and Louis B. Hall, published for the
Early English Text Society The Early English Text Society (EETS) is a text publication society founded in 1864 which is dedicated to the editing and publication of early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes contain editions of ...
by the
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1982 * ''The Digby Plays: Facsimiles of the Plays in Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and E. Museo 160'' edited by Donald C. Baker and John L. Murphy, Leeds, 1976


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Digby Conversion of Saint Paul Medieval drama Middle English literature Christian plays Plays set in the 1st century Religious vernacular drama English plays 15th-century plays Works of unknown authorship Paul the Apostle