when was the second shepherds' play written
The remainder of his soliloquy, which is almost as long as Coll's, focuses on marriage and his general unhappiness with his wife and all wives, in general. Team 1. Cycle or mystery plays evolved in towns and cities and were sanctioned by the church. 192-93. Other inconsistencies also occur between historical periods, and this is known as anachronism. Source: Sheri Metzger Karmiol, Critical Essay on The Second Shepherds' Play, in Drama for Students, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008. The angel appears exactly between the end of the first three-fifths of the play and the beginning of the final two-fifths, speaking the whole stanza 34, and the tumult and confusion cease as the first three-fifths of the play come to a halt with the words, It is in stanza 33 of this play that Jesus Christ is mentioned as the third shepherd crosses himself, in symbolic reference, perhaps, to Christ's human life-span; Sir Gawain crosses himself finally in stanza 33 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a thoroughly, "numerous" work …. The guild system evolved in the later medieval period, as more people began to move into small towns. After seeing the woolly four-footed infant, he proclaims, ‘Ill-spon weft, iwys, ay commys foull owte. The play is written in verse. He has a long snowte!’ Upon hearing this exclamation, Coll and Gyb return to the college to investigate and, significantly, the second shepherd unveils the fraud. While Gardner's observation about the importance of numerology in the pageant is apt, it may be time to alter or modify its focus. While the husband left to work the fields, or in the case of Gib to watch the flock, the wife "milked the cows; soaked, beat, and combed out the flax; fed the chickens, ducks, and geese; sheered the sheep; made the cheese and butter; and cultivated the family vegetable patch." Formal stanzas should be consistent in terms of meter, length, and rhyme scheme, and each formal stanza should repeat the same structure. Even if she were asked to do more, she would willingly help. Mak and Gill's lamb/infant symbolizes the birth of Jesus, the Lamb of God. He has a very brief soliloquy that only laments the awful weather but which he links to Noah's flood. sleeps in the fields and guards the sheep. This form of stanza is a variation of the rondel (a French verse form). Rather, most art is today is concerned with political, racial, or sexual themes. These men have in common their belief in God and their belief in a world created for and governed by men. The third section of the play turns the audience's focus back to the lesson the play is meant to teach. The location for The Second Shepherds' Play covers both medieval England and biblical Bethlehem. Some wives "even helped with the plowing." But when the shepherds search his cottage all they note are the "two tome platters." Although the first shepherd laments the harsh conditions on earth and wonders why God would allow them to exist, he never transforms this disillusionment into heretical comments about the divine. The child in the cradle is the stolen ram, of course, and she has every intention of eating him when the opportunity presents itself. Gill's portrayal on stage might even suggest to the women in the audience that there is another way to circumvent their role as subservient wife. The play, itself, contains no divisions of act or scene, but there are three distinct scenes: the Shepherds' soliloquies in which they lament their poverty, the oppressive natures of their lives, and the terrible weather; the scene with Mak and Gil in which they try to disguise the stolen lamb as their newborn child; and the adoration of the Christ-child in Bethlehem. He says that he wishes her dead. On the contrary, this distinction has consistently gone to the trickster Mak. At this point in Gib's complaining, Coll finally speaks up and asks that God watch over the audience, who have had to endure Gib's increasingly vicious harangue about his wife and marriage, in general. This is what happens in The Second Shepherds' Play. He feels powerless to fight his oppressors, and explains that "Dare no man reprieve" his master. The play was written when war between England and France scarred the first half of the 15th century. Each of their opening complaints consists of six stanzas, although young Daw's six are interrupted by an exchange with his two self-righteous elders; their references to the prophets occupy one stanza each; and their praise for the baby Jesus also one stanza each. John Gardner articulates what he considers the controlling metaphor of the drama: ‘The Second Shepherds' Play is in a sense an exploration of the Christian significance of the number three: the play focuses on three shepherds; it begins with three soliloquies which open the first of three distinct movements; it treats three motifs appropriate to the Nativity story—law, charity and wonder—and associates them with the Holy Trinity; it closes with the three adorations of the Christ child and the giving of three symbolic gifts’. CRITICISM Full Title: The Second Shepherd’s Play When Written: Around 1475 – 1500 Where Written: Wakefield When Published: Around 1475 – 1500 Literary Period: Medieval Genre: Mystery play Setting: Medieval England and Bethlehem Climax: When the shepherds discover … Title: Microsoft Word - Second Shepherds' Play Programme.docx Author: Sarah Brooks Created Date: 12/18/2012 7:52:45 PM Daw assumes the voice of authority when he orders the two older shepherds to rest after they have recovered their sheep. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Instead, he is commonly considered a mere echo or extension of his cohorts, Coll and Daw. The Second Shepherds' Play is a dramatic presentation that incorporates comedy and liturgy (public worship and ritual) into a theatrical staging. Finucane, Ronald C., Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England, Palgrave Macmillan, 1995. The Second Shepherds’ Play (also known as The Second Shepherds’ Pageant) is a famous medieval mystery play which is contained in the manuscript HM1, the unique manuscript of the Wakefield Cycle. English. Later the audience meets Gill and sees her interaction with her husband, and a completely different depiction is offered. She swaddles the sheep and places it in the cradle. She teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico, where she is a lecturer in the University's Honors Program. If one was lucky plenty to hold. (April 2, 2021). His wife makes him so miserable that he condemns all wives and all marriages, since marriage puts men "in the shackles." Daw is younger than the other two shepherds. It is play number thirteen of thirty-two contained in the only surviving manuscript, currently held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The play was written in Middle English, which is the vernacular (everyday) language that was used in England between about 1100 and 1500. 28, No. Aftereffects of the great plague known as the Black Death persisted throughout the century. He casts a spell over the three shepherds so that they remain sleeping and then steals a sheep from the flock. As punishment for their actions, Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise, and Eve is told that henceforth she will be subject to man's rule. In many mystery plays, groups of three and four characters—soldiers and shepherds, for example—speak in rotation for some of the time, but in the Second Shepherds' Play the system is complete. Paul tells women "to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited." The biblical portion of the play, a retelling of the Visitation of the Shepherds, comes only after a longer, invented story that mirrors it, in which the shepherds, before visiting the holy baby outside in a manger, must first rescue one of their sheep that has been hidden in a cradle indoors by a comically evil sheep-stealing couple. In the words of David Lampe, ‘The Towneley (Wakefield) The Second Shepherds' Play is clearly the single most popular piece of medieval English drama, appearing in every anthology of English literature that devotes space to the medieval period’. The Second Shepherds' Play is composed numerically, perhaps more thoroughly than the other plays by the Wakefield Master, who, it seems, habitually uses numbers within his plots to distinguish the human from the divine, in connection with his practice of elaborating the worldly or evil contrasts to divine truth found in many of the mystery plays, and turning them into foolish lazzi which carry a burden of horror with them, or into comic or horrifyingly wrong adumbrations of Salvation. This play contains 502 lines, divided into 56 stanzas. One of the first commentators to use Eve in this manner was Paul. Nicholas is shortly joined by Gilbert, who brings with him the story of his cackling wife, his Eve. Like the others, he begins his soliloquy with a complaint about the miserable weather. Interestingly, Mak's criminal potential is not rooted in his generally distrustful nature or prior deviant behavior. When literature is written by men, women are seen through male eyes. Second Shepherds' Play, an English miracle play by the Wakefield Master (fl. Instead, Abate claims, Gyb foreshadows the events that are to come later in the play. He is brought near to "miscarry" or ruin and thus will never be in a position to work his own land. Fleming, Peter, Family and Household in Medieval England, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. The text shifts both time and place, referring to Christian saints and to the birth of Christ, although these things and events would have been separated by hundreds of years and reversed in time. The bird symbolizes the dove, the Christian emblem of peace and divinity. She is fully capable of doing more, of being her husband's peer. Gib recalls the prophecy that they have been taught that a savior would be born to relieve them of their sins and all three agree to go and see the baby. Traditionally, the Catholic Church opposed drama because it frequently included nudity, fights with wild beasts, and because the sacrifice of Christians was often included as a part of pagan spectacle in ancient Rome. Additionally, while the first half of the play takes place in Medieval England, the shepherds are easily able to walk to Bethlehem in a matter of hours, where events occurred fourteen centuries earlier. In 1903, Gayley and Alwin Thaler published an anthology of criticism and dramatic selections entitled Representative English Comedies. The way in which Gyb's opening speech announces central themes and important events in Secunda Pastorum continues into the second stanza. Normington, Katie, "Giving Voice to Women: Teaching Feminist Approaches to the Mystery Plays," in College Literature, Vol. The series of plays attributed to the Wakefield master are likely the work of many authors over a vast period of years, perhaps as much as a hundred years. In the years that followed the 1540 edict, there were a number of local attempts to ban performances of religious drama, but the plays generated a lot of money for communities, so local officials often ignored the ban. Awareness that the term ‘noys’ can be read as ‘nose’ instead of or in addition to ‘noise’ adds another facet to his role as a foreshadower. Soon after Mak joins the shepherds, for instance, Gyb identifies him as someone who has the look ‘Of stelying … shepe.’ In addition to setting the stage for the central secular event of the drama, Gyb's comment alludes to the manner in which the ruse is detected. More than simply announcing the second shepherd as a hen-pecked and embittered husband, his remarks also prefigure the personality of Mak's wife. After several decades of focusing on the significance of threes in Secunda Pastorum, the insight made possible by the bibliographic oversight suggest that the time has come to consider the importance of another digit in the drama: the number two. Gyb's numerous allusions call for a reconsideration of his importance in the drama. Although this is not the usual punishment of death for stealing sheep, the story of Jesus's birth that follows in the final section of the play reminds the audience that forgiveness is the focus of New Testament teaching. Symbolism is common in medieval drama. The mock blessing that he utters in his opening speech is reiterated in a more serious and sacred form later in the pageant when Gyb first sees the Christ child: ‘Hayll, sufferan sauyoure, for thou has vs soght!’ In this way, the second shepherd has not only helped prepare audience members for the pageant's account of the biblical story, but also assumed an important role in the actual telling of it. Coll continues to lament his lack of power and that he dare not complain to anyone about how he is treated, since the landowner's servant has too much power. In contrast, Gill is present in the play and is able to refute both her husband's words and those of Gib, who paints all women as equally bad. But the language was Latin rather than vernacular languages, and the audiences were almost exclusively limited to those living in monastic communities. Coll offers cherries and Gib offers a bird, while Daw brings a ball for the child. Source for information on Second Shepherds' Play: The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. A moment from The Second Shepherds’ Play in the Wakefield Mystery Plays as performed by The Players of St Peter in London in 2005. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. When asked about his wife, Mak says that she is lazy, that she drinks, and that every year she produces another child and sometimes two. The concluding line rhymes with the ninth line. Although the underlying tone of The Second Shepherd’s Play is serious, many of the antics that occur among the shepherds are extremely farcical in nature. This whole section is so humorous that the usual punishment of hanging is ignored, although the audience is reminded several times by Gill that stealing sheep is an offense where the punishment is death. Mystery plays, which are so named because they refer to the spiritual mystery of Christ's birth and death, combine comic elements with biblical stories. The suggestion is not to engage in committing crimes with her husband. ." Coll refers to the economic realities of his world when he says that "husbands" are "nearhands / Out of the door" (nearly homeless). But the blend of secular and sacred contributes to its role as a comedy of instruction. Indeed, mystery plays were medieval dramas that explored the so-called mystery of religious scripture. [around] 1475" splits the difference between two different date ranges assigned to the play in the NA, where it is dated "ca.1450-1475" on the timeline at NA 28, and "last quarter of the fifteenth century" in the headnote, NA 449). In The Second Shepherds' Play, the women are described in negative terms, but it is in describing them that men diminish women. In his first few lines before his identity is discovered, Mak states that his children weep continually. Notably, a soliloquy is different from a monologue, in which a character speaks his thoughts aloud, but with the knowledge that other characters are present. Her actions suggest that Gill is a good match for Mak. Examining the carnivalesque atmosphere within the pageant and its use of punning and political parody respectively, they tend to view Coll, Gyb, and Daw as a unit and lock them into fixed positions. Mak is the thief who, after the shepherds are asleep, steals one of their sheep. Symbolism is also obvious in the gifts that the shepherds present to the Christ child. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Views: 463. In the ninth century, musical elaboration of the Latin liturgy began to appear as part of certain feasts. According to the Gies, wives might also work with their husbands—"sowing, reaping, gleaning, binding, threshing, raking, winnowing, thatching." His cleverness seems to be never-ending. 2 Apr. HISTORICAL CONTEXT Daw is a boy who works for Coll and Gib. When the play was presented as children's theater in 1981, Carole Corbeil, writing in the Globe and Mail called it "uncloying, unsentimental, uncommercial, funny, warm, and mercifully short." what, these weathers are cold, and I am ill happed; I am near hand-dold [1], so long have I napped; My legs bend and fold, my fingers are chapped, It is not as I would, for I am all lapped In sorrow. Additional information on The Second Shepherd’s Play can be found here. In fact the playwright makes a point of plainly demonstrating what he is doing by repeating—in a way perhaps characteristic of medieval literature—his jokes. SOURCES The audience sees this marriage twice. The Wakefield Master provides no real information about Mak and his wife, other than their absolute poverty, but given that they are not homeless, as Coll suggests is the case for many peasants, it is likely that their small cottage is on property that they do not own. The ascendancy of King Henry VII to the throne marks the end of the medieval period and generally signifies the shift from Middle English to Modern English (the basic predecessor of English as we know it today). Coogan, Michael D., ed, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 2001. The Second Shepherds' Play dates from the latter half of the fifteenth century. Mak grouses that his wife produces a child every year and in some years two, and so she must be either constantly pregnant or just recovering from childbirth. Women are empty vessels, only understood or seen through their household roles. Daw enters and does not see Coll and Gib. Since none of the many children that Mak claims to have fathered are in sight, the audience assumes they are also sleeping. Because The Second Shepherds' Play has been recently limited to performances during holiday entertainment, the play is returning to its medieval roots as it is reincorporated into a religious observance. Although mystery plays developed from liturgical drama (a play acted in or around the church that portrays Bible stories or saints‧ lives) and were initially performed in Latin, they soon began to be performed in the vernacular language of the audience. Mak responds with his head covered and using a southern accent several of the townspeople participated as crew. His own text: Adam was not perceived as hard work, however, comparing her brows those... Theatre in context: an introduction, Routledge, 1992, pp foreshadows! `` Woe is him that him grieve. _______________ ideals sheep stealer,... Play tricks on other characters and sometimes to be performed from wagons and were sanctioned the! For sheep, and all of their sheep would be performed from town-to-town lot adds Coll... 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