Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Literary through – or beyond? – Form
- I Instrumental Forms
- II Form Performed
- 4 Rhymed Alliterative Verse in Mise en page Transition: Two Case Studies in English Poetic Hybridity
- 5 Idiot Psalms: Sound, Style, and the Performance of the Literary in the Towneley Shepherds’ Plays
- 6 Inaudible Music
- III Temporalities of Form
- Index
5 - Idiot Psalms: Sound, Style, and the Performance of the Literary in the Towneley Shepherds’ Plays
from II - Form Performed
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Literary through – or beyond? – Form
- I Instrumental Forms
- II Form Performed
- 4 Rhymed Alliterative Verse in Mise en page Transition: Two Case Studies in English Poetic Hybridity
- 5 Idiot Psalms: Sound, Style, and the Performance of the Literary in the Towneley Shepherds’ Plays
- 6 Inaudible Music
- III Temporalities of Form
- Index
Summary
The divine style is sweet and plain, not lofty and proud as that of Virgil and the poets.
Benvenuto de ImolaMidway through the Towneley First Shepherds’ Play is an odd and remarkable performance of the literary. An angel has appeared to a trio of unhappy shepherds who are sleepily watching their flocks and has announced to them the birth of the Christ child. After marveling at the angelic announcement, the shepherds begin to make proclamations of their own, recalling in turn biblical prophecies of a savior. As their litany of prophets is coming to an end, the first shepherd, Gyb, offers another:
Virgill in his poetre
Sayde in his verse,
Euen thus be gramere,
As I shall reherse:
Iam noua progenies celo demittitur alto;
Iam rediet Virgo redeunt Saturnia regna. (121/556–59)
Although it was not uncommon to count Virgil among the prophets of Christ's birth in the later Middle Ages, this is a strange moment – it is one thing for the shepherds to summarize biblical prophecies, but what are we to make of the ability of a humble herdsman to recite a passage of Latin poetry? Gyb's reference to Virgil's fourth Eclogue temporarily transforms the litany from that of prophecy to that of pastoral poetry, emphasizing the literariness of Virgil's “poetre,” “verse,” and “gramere” and noting that he will “reherse” it, a term that suggests formal repetition or recitation.
The peculiarity of Gyb's reference to Virgil is heightened by the second shepherd's, Iohn's, immediate expression of disdain for it:
Weme! tord! What speke ye
Here in my eeres?
Tell vs no clerge!
I hold you of the freres;
Ye preche.
It semys by youre Laton
Ye haue lerd oure Caton. (121–22/560–66)
With a stylistic and linguistic jolt, Iohn's exclamations shift the play's register from sublimity back to vulgarity, and from Latin poetry to vernacular insult. Associating Gyb's quotation with “clergy,” or clerical learning, and specifically that of the preaching friars, he seemingly forgets that he too has been preaching. Even as this exchange between Gyb and Iohn foreshadows the exaltation of the shepherds’ style and associates them briefly with ecclesiastical pastoral, it also throws into relief the artificiality of the shepherds’ prophetic litany, calling attention to the scene's incongruous stylistic shift from the shepherds’ earlier complaining and singing to these high-style proclamations.
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- The Medieval Literary: Beyond Form , pp. 119 - 140Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018