Kamryn Kobel, “Inspecting the Image: Metatheatric Representations in Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Gammer Gurton’s Needle”
The Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Gammer Gurton’s Needle are two plays that utilize metatheatricality to call attention to the fact that they are pieces of drama and performance. Both plays make use of props and staging to achieve this metatheatricality. The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, a miracle play that argues in favor of transubstantiation, uses a prop host to represent a real host and an image of Jesus to portray Christ within the performance. Gammer Gurton’s Needle also utilizes props in this way, including the use of a sewing needle and a conjuring circle as representations of intangible religious ideals. The way that these plays utilize props as representations of religious images creates the metatheatricality of the performances and of the relationship that the audience has with them. The recognition of the props as props rather than serious representations of real-life objects allows for a level of separation between play and reality, contributing to these plays’ metatheatrics. Through the use of props and staging, the plays are able to communicate directly with the audience—and, because of this relationship between performance and audience, the audience is encouraged to confront and question the validity of these representations of religious images in real-life liturgy. Due to the plays’ metatheatrical use of props, the audiences must continually confront the fact that the religious images in the plays are mere representations and not authentic images, creating a line of questioning about the validity of religious representations within drama that Play of the Sacrament initiates and Gammer Gurton’s Needle further explores. This opportunity for reflection is initially opened in Play of the Sacrament and is then further exploited within the metatheatricality of Gammer Gurton’s Needle. First, this essay will demonstrate how the plays’ use of props is metatheatrical. Then, it will explore how this metatheatricality creates a relationship between the performance and the audience. Finally, this essay will describe how these relationships between the plays and the audiences not only allow for but demand that the representations offered within the dramas be confronted and questioned by the audience.
The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, a miracle play written in the late fifteenth century, depicts a group of Jewish merchants torturing a host cake in an attempt to prove that it is not truly the body and blood of Christ. Being a miracle play, this performance supports the doctrine of transubstantiation and argues in favor of the Eucharistic doctrine, as the performance depicts a host cake that bleeds when stabbed and that transforms into a speaking image of Jesus. To do so, the play requires a prop host—that is, a fake host that represents a real host—to display the miracle that the Jewish merchants witness, as well as a representation of Jesus, who speaks to and ultimately convinces the merchants to convert to Christianity. The play portrays these important religious images, the host and Christ, through a metatheatrical use of props.
To begin, we can inspect the main element of Play of the Sacrament: the prop host used to depict the miracle, and how its exuberant and exaggerated behavior makes the host used within the performance metatheatrical. The play works to ensure that the audience pays attention to the fact that the miracle occurring in this play is a theatrical representation rather than a serious display of a miracle. In Sarah Beckwith’s article “Ritual, Church, and Theater: Medieval Dramas of the Sacred Body,” where she discusses the relationship between ritual and theater in Play of the Sacrament, she says, “For the miracle in a miracle play is a purely theatrical event. For this play in particular it is overtly, explicitly, and outrageously theatrical, drawing attention histrionically to its own sense of show” (68). As Beckwith argues, Play of the Sacrament indulges in its own theatricality, particularly within its representation of the host. During the miracle that is performed, the host explodes with blood in an overtly theatrical manner; Jonathas exclaims, “It bleedeth as it were wood, iwis!” (Croxton line 483), describing the bleeding as “wood,” or enraged, and thus demonstrating the emotiveness of the bleeding host and the miracle event occurring. Then, when the merchants put the host in a cauldron, the “…oil waxeth red as blood,/And out of the cauldron it beginnith to rin!” (Croxton lines 674–675). This event’s theatricality is demonstrated as the contents of the cauldron dramatically turn to blood and threaten to explode. Lastly, the dramatics of the miracle peak when the merchants cry out:
MASPHAT: This oven bleedeth out on every side!
MALCHUS: Yea, the oven on pieces ginneth to rive asunder;
This is a marvelous case this tide! (Croxton lines 714–716)
The merchant’s process of discovering the Eucharist as the bleeding body of Christ concludes with this highly theatrical, “marvelous” display; the host, the caldron, and the oven all literally explode on stage, heightening the drama of the play. The play’s repeated use of these props acknowledges their theatricality as they exhibit ridiculous, over-the-top displays. The performance uses these props to create a sense of metatheatricality that emphasizes their role as representations rather than pieces of reality, and the use of props in this way “draw[s] attention histrionically to its own sense of show,” as Beckwith puts it. The concept of a cauldron turning its contents to blood and an oven bleeding “on every side” as though it is wounded is inherently theatrical. The exuberant portrayal of the miracle through props exploding and bleeding demonstrates the play’s indulgence in its own drama, putting the exaggerated theatricality at the forefront of the performance. The audience is therefore presented with the play as a self-aware dramatic representation, effectively achieving metatheatricality.
After this highly metatheatrical display of the prop host’s torture, Play of the Sacrament introduces another prop: an image of Christ himself. Following the bloody explosion of the prop oven, the stage directions describe the host bread turning into an image of Jesus, and this Jesus asks the Jewish merchants: “Why blaspheme you me? Why do ye thus? / Why put you me to new tormentry, / And I died for you on the Cross?” (Croxton lines 731–733). The prop host bread, a representation of a real host that the play depicts as overly dramatic and metatheatrical, is thus transformed into Christ, offering the audience two representations of his body in two different prop images. The play presents this image of Christ as the same entity as the host bread that the merchants have just tortured, as the image asks, “Why put you me to new tormentry,” referring to the theatrical events that have just occurred. However, this also introduces a representational contradiction that the play presents to the audience. The play is willing to represent the host by using a real piece of bread, but it is not willing to represent Jesus through the use of a human actor. This discrepancy between representations conveys metatheatricality to the audience through the juxtaposition that it creates; the audience sees that the play is willing to represent the Eucharist through a fake, prop host, yet it is not willing to represent Jesus through an actor. The sight of an image of Jesus among the actors and the other props reminds the audience of the play’s unwillingness to embody Jesus, contrasting its willingness to embody the host, and reminding the audience that the entire production is, in fact, only a play and a mere representation of religious concepts.
These seeming contradictions raise questions for the audience about the validity of representing religious images on stage, as the play demonstrates a willingness to embody the host but not Christ. For a play that argues in favor of transubstantiation and the idea that the host is Christ, this discrepancy as to what can be represented inherently calls into question the usefulness of dramatic representation at all. Christina Fitzgerald identifies and explores this complication in her article “Performance Anxiety and the Passion in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” Fitzgerald says, “And if the ‘image’ of Jesus is just that, rather than an actor, then the play in performance avoids literally embodying Christ altogether. If both drama and the Passion involve someone standing in for someone else, then this play may well reject Passion drama itself, replacing ‘someone’ with ‘something’— a host or an image, a prop or an imagined form in a closet drama” (327). The play “avoids literally embodying Christ,” but at the same time, embodies a host on stage, and therefore “rejects Passion drama itself” as it undermines the very doctrine that it argues for. Faced with these complicated concepts of what is representable in prop form and what is not, the audience must question the validity of the play’s dramatic representations of these religious images.
Despite the unavoidable contradictions of representational images, the events that transpire at the end of the play reinforce the orthodox doctrine of transubstantiation, as it is a miracle play and aims to support the Eucharist despite the inherent contradictions that it contains. At the play’s end, the Jewish merchants who torture the prop host and witness the miracle convert to Christianity. David Lawton discusses the ending of the Croxton play in his article “Sacrilege and Theatricality: The Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” He acknowledges that:
…the transformation is inherently problematic if its purpose is to persuade doubters of the truth of transubstantiation, for it depends entirely on an egregious theatrical illusion. What makes this illusion credible is that the Jews are persuaded, indeed converted, by it—they are its guarantors in the world of the performance. But there is nothing here that asks us to overlook the fact that we are watching a play. (Lawton 297)
Lawton argues that despite the play’s favorable portrayal of the Eucharist, its engagement with itself as a performance upholds its metatheatricality and undermines its own argument. Not only does it engage and uphold its status as a play, but it “depends entirely on an egregious theatrical illusion,” which would be the overly exaggerated drama of the bleeding host and the miracle, portrayed within the performance by prop representations. Despite the play arguing that in reality the host is not just a representation, the audience is reminded that it is possible to stage the host as the play itself has done. The “egregious theatrics of the miracle” and the props used to depict this miracle display the play’s metatheatricality, showing the audience that representations of religious images are innately theatrical and that they are just representations. By displaying the host through a prop, the play inherently disproves the transubstantiation concept that the host isn’t a mere representation and is, truly, the body and blood of Christ. This complex relationship between prop, representation, image, performance, and audience leads both the play and the people watching the play to question the validity of what the Play of the Sacrament aims to convey and the validity of using metatheatrical prop representations to do so.
These metatheatrical implications of the props within the play present a contradiction about the representation of religious images despite the play’s overtly pro-transubstantiation argument. The performance of the miracle inherently undermines the validity of transubstantiation, as it shows that the host and the Eucharist can be recreated and represented, inherently portraying the Eucharist as an empty image and therefore arguing against its very meaning. Because it is a piece of theater, Play of the Sacrament innately contradicts the doctrine for which it argues. This complication of and inquiry into the Croxton play’s representation of religious images such as the host through props is explored in Beckwith’s article. She argues that “Having this host on stage implies that the host can be staged” (Beckwith 75). The representations of transubstantiation seen within the play through the use of a fake prop host implies that the host is just that—a representation—rather than the true body and blood of Christ himself: that it “can be staged.” Because the Play of the Sacrament acknowledges that it is a play through its metatheatrical portrayal of the host and of the miracle, it simultaneously and inherently creates a complex irony behind its own use of a representation of the host. This intrinsic undermining of the validity of religious images that the play presents forces the audience to confront the representation of religious images overall. Due to the play’s metatheatricality, the audience maintains an awareness that the play is just a representation, but it begs the question: are all religious images, including the host, simply representations? This line of thinking and questioning is unavoidable in a metatheatrical play such as Play of the Sacrament, and although the play’s purpose is not to raise this question, the metatheatrical relationship that it fosters with the audience complicates the concept of representing religious images and forms these questions nonetheless. Despite being a miracle play and arguing in favor of transubstantiation, Play of the Sacrament cannot escape the fact that it is a play, and that the image of Jesus, the Eucharist, and the miracle that takes place during its performance are only theatrical representations and can only ever be theatrical representations, not real images.
These conflicts and questions about representations of religious images reemerge around half a century after Play of the Sacrament in the mid-sixteenth century play, Gammer Gurton’s Needle. Although these two plays function in different ways and argue different theological ends, their use of metatheatricality creates comparable relationships between the plays and their audiences, especially when investigating the validity and contradictions of representing religious images within drama. As opposed to the liturgical Play of the Sacrament, which aims to support the doctrine of transubstantiation, Gammer Gurton’s Needle is a secular play that focuses on the mundane yet farcically humorous events that transpire after a woman loses her sewing needle. Gammer Gurton’s Needle was traditionally performed at universities by students to an audience of fellow students, making the intended recipients of the play a group of educated people– presumably with the capacity to engage in a critical analysis of and conversation with the performance as made possible through its metatheatricality (Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama 496).
The metatheatricality of Gammer Gurton’s Needle can be found in its use of props and staging to engage with the audience, much like the Play of the Sacrament. The main element of drama throughout the play is provided by Gammer Gurton’s sewing needle—or, more accurately, its absence. Despite the needle (another prop) being missing for most of the performance, the audience knows the lost needle’s location, as it is revealed in the prologue. At the play’s opening, the Prologue states, “In Hodge’s leather breeches her needle she lost” (Gammer Gurton’s Needle line 4), ironically providing the audience with knowledge that the characters within the play do not possess. This irony and the audience’s inclusion in this knowledge function in correlation with the props in the play—in this case, the needle that Gammer Gurton has lost and that the various characters search for throughout the dramatic events of the performance. The audience’s knowledge about the location of the prop, the driving force behind the events of the play, creates a metatheatrical relationship between the play and the audience. Because the location of the needle is known to the audience throughout the events that transpire, the performance’s drama does not derive from any narrative stakes—it derives from the entertainment that the metatheatrical knowledge provides. In Frank Ardolino’s article “Misperception and Protestant Reading in Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” Ardolino argues that “…the audience members, who already know the needle’s location, are looking for a different end to the tale. The audience fills the gap in the text by finding its hidden meanings, which are not perceived by the circumscribed stage characters who are overly concerned with the whereabouts of the small and trivial, the physical needle” (23). Here, Ardolino acknowledges the role that this metatheatrical irony takes in the overall functionality of the play—again, the drama does not entirely lie within the events of the play, but rather in the relationship that the audience has with the play itself—a relationship that is made possible through the use of the prop needle. The irony within the play is what invites the audience to “[fill] the gap in the text,” and therefore to interact and question the representations that the performance stages. And, as the play was traditionally performed for a university-educated audience, the metatheatrical contradictions that it offers the audience become even more inviting as a place for discourse and questioning about the play’s “hidden meanings,” including the implications of its representations.
The needle is not the play’s only way of fostering a metatheatrical relationship between itself and its audience. The staging of this play, particularly the use of a devil conjuring circle, demonstrates the convolution of the dramatic representation of religious images that Play of the Sacrament first invited for questioning. Within Gammer Gurton’s Needle, the characters Diccon and Hodge create a conjuring circle in an attempt to summon a devil to assist them in finding the lost needle. Diccon says, “Come hither then, and stir thee not / One inch out of this circle plat” (Gammer Gurton’s Needle 2.1.89–90). Diccon and Hodge form a summoning circle (the “circle plat”), which despite being a sacrilegious symbol is a representation of a religious image nonetheless, and a powerful one at that. However, the legitimacy of the circle is refuted by Diccon who, after Hodge flees the scene in fear of the devil, says, “Is not here a cleanly prank? / But thy matter was no better / Nor thy presence here no sweeter” (Gammer Gurton’s Needle 2.2. 3–5). Here, Diccon speaks directly to the audience, as he says “thy presence” in referral to whomever is watching the events of the play. He tells the audience that the attempted summoning is “a cleanly prank,” demonstrating that the circle within the play is only a representation of a real conjuring circle since it is a prank and not meant to be real. Diccon’s direct dialogue to the audience addressing the empty representation of the conjuring circle creates metatheatricality in that he acknowledges an awareness that he is part of a play, linking this metatheatricality to a representation of a religious image. This address from Diccon renders the representation of this religious image as just that—a representation. The image of the devil summoning circle is both fake within the play and fake within real life, as Diccon’s admission that the summoning is a prank conveys its emptiness to the audience and the metatheatrical relationship between audience and performance further solidifies. The play deliberately leads the audience to confront the notion that the summoning circle, a representation, is merely a representation and holds no real power.
Gammer Gurton’s Needle’s metatheatrical use of props and staging in this way demonstrates the inherent conflict of representing religious images within drama, a friction that Play of the Sacrament first introduces through its use of a prop host. Gammer Gurton’s Needle draws the audience into questioning the representation more purposefully, as the metatheatricality comes from the play’s direct communication with the audience; through the irony that the prologue provides and through directing Diccon’s speech to the audience. Gammer Gurton’s Needle achieves metatheatricality from a direct line of communication with the audience, making it more deliberate than Play of the Sacrament, whose metatheatricality and the convolution of representing religious images derives from an unavoidable irony inherent in the concept of a miracle play being rehearsed and performed using a theatrically fake prop host. However, in both plays, the opportunity for inspecting these images and the capacity to represent these images, including the contradictory nature of doing so, arises only due to the fact that these are plays, and due to the audience and plays’ knowledge of this fact. Both plays utilize their representations of religious images in a metatheatrical way, and therefore present similar opportunities for the audience to interact with and find complexities within them as they are designed as a connection to the audience. Going back to Beckwith, if the summoning circle “can be staged” like the host can, the power and gravity around both of those religious images is inherently undermined (Beckwith 75). And the audience can only understand this undermining because the play overtly points it out to them through their recognition of these props as props and the metatheatricality that this recognition provides.
It is impossible for a play not to be a play, as then it is no longer a representation and instead becomes the real thing. We cannot ask plays not to be plays and we cannot ask representations to be real, but we can use drama to grant us access to larger ideas about religion and to create a conversation about the ideas to which we subscribe. Drama, then, is a way for us to confront the uncomfortable, represent the unrepresentable, and perceive the unperceivable. Although these plays undermine the images that they represent, they allow the audience to grapple more critically and more completely with the things that they depict and ideas that they portray. To physically interact with the concepts of God and the Devil, they must be represented in some form, whether it be by an actor, an image, a host cake, or a fake summoning circle, both within theatrical performances and within everyday life. Through these dramas’ recognition that they are dramas and through their metatheatricality, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Gammer Gurton’s Needle allow their audiences to confront the reality of representation and gives them an opportunity to interact with their intangible yet very real beliefs about God and the universe. The questions about representation that Play of the Sacrament introduces and that Gammer Gurton’s Needle further investigates help us understand the ever-evolving relationship between audience and performance and invites us to inspect the implications of drama on our own worldview.
Works Cited
Ardolino, Frank. “Misperception and Protestant Reading in Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 50, no. 1, 2009, pp. 17–34.
Beckwith, Sarah. “Ritual, Church, and Theatre: Medieval Dramas of the Sacred Body.” Culture and History 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing, Wayne State University Press, 1992, pp. 65–89.
“Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama, edited by Christina M. Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, Broadview Press, 2013, pp. 336–55.
Fitzgerald, Christina M. “Performance Anxiety and the Passion in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 46, issue no. 2, 2016, pp. 315–37.
Fitzgerald, Christina M. and John T. Sebastian, editors. The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama. Broadview Press, 2013.
“Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama, edited by Christina Fitzgerald and John T. Sebastian, Broadview Press, 2013, pp. 499–540.
Lawton, David. “Sacrilege and Theatricality: the Croxton Play of the Sacrament.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, 2003, pp. 281–309.
This essay was written in ENL 305, with Professor Zysk in the Spring semester 2023.