Category Archives: Production

Angels Falling Across the Cycles

Posted on by under Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

A look at how the York play “The Creation & Fall of the Angels”, on which “The War in Heaven” is based, compares to the plays of the same story across the three other English biblical dramatic cycles.

York’s Mystery Plays are one of four manuscript groups termed “cycle plays”. All of them have the same premise, the dramatisation of the biblical story from Creation to Doom. The Chester Plays belonged to their city on a model similar, but not identical, to York. The Towneley Cycle are also sometimes called the “Wakefield Mystery Plays”, because they were originally thought to belong to that city; today there is only agreement that we don’t know for sure where they are from, or how they were performed. We know even less about the N-Town Plays, which are probably from East Anglia; they may actually be a collection of plays that were compiled together to form a cycle, rather than having ever been played as such, in the manner of the other plays.

All of the cycles start with the Creation of Heaven and the Fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels, so while the story of our play is well represented in the group (this is not true for every play; not all of the stories appear in all of the cycles), we thought it would be interesting to look at how the other opening plays compared to one another. Here’s a brief look at what you’ll find, if you look at them together:

– The play’s length varies considerably. The N-Town play has fewer than a hundred lines, while Chester’s clocks in just over three hundred. (Towneley and York tie at one hundred sixty each.)

– The short N-Town play includes only four characters: God, Lucifer, a Good Angel and a Bad Angel. Though York is twice its length, it only adds a second angel- one is designated a Seraphim and the other a Cherubim*. Despite being equal in length to York, the Towneley “Creation & Fall” includes nine characters, populating Heaven and Hell slightly more thoroughly. Chester’s angels are the reason the play is so long: eight types of angel are represented in the play, in addition to God, while Hell contains two demons, as well as Lucifer, and Lucifer’s companion in both dominions, Lightborne. He is unique in the plays; no other angel or demon, besides Lucifer, is given a proper name rather than a categoric title.   * Note to the sharp-eyed: Seraphim and Cherubim are indeed the plural forms of types of angels. This is how they are named in the plays. Whether that means that each one is effectively a representative spokesangel of its class, or whether a group of actors recite their lines in chorus to create that plural, isn’t noted.

– York’s play belonged to the Tanners (alternatively called the Barkers). Although the Chester plays may not have been “owned” by guilds on quite the same model as York, Chester’s Tanners have also been considered responsible for their “Creation of Heaven and Fall of Angels” play. We don’t know if the N-Town plays were affiliated with a particular location- it’s possible that they weren’t owned by a single city- and there’s no indication of guilds being responsible for particular plays. Only four of the Towneley plays given any suggestion of guilds, and one of the plays that does is this one. If you happened to guess that the guild named is the Barkers, you win! The association of this guild with this particular biblical story, in performance, was apparently strong across England.

– In the York play, the angels don’t argue about whether to worship God or Lucifer. Lucifer brags, and repeatedly tells the angels that they should worship him, but the Good Angels simply continue to worship God. Those angels who are cast down to Hell with Lucifer don’t say much; it’s the only play where the angelic argument comes down to picking a side and then stubbornly staying with it, rather than actively trying to fight the ones who have made a different choice. 

           By contrast, the bulk of the Chester version is a disputation between various types of angels and Lucifer, as they try to convince him of his misguided pride. The Towneley play likewise offers back-and-forth argument, but their play takes a different tactic: once Lucifer has made his pitch for superiority, the angels then argue amongst themselves over who will follow him and who will follow God, rather than arguing with Lucifer himself. The shortness of the N-Town play does not allow for much debate, although even in its briefness the Good Angel informs Lucifer that he is in error.

            It’s a shame we know nothing about the authors of any of these plays, as these distinctions prompt interesting questions about angelic agency, how much power Lucifer truly has (versus how much he thinks he has!), and the usefulness of debate make for interesting perspectives!

– In the Towneley play, God’s creation of the world is also included in that first play. All of the others have “The Creation” as their second play. That changes what God has to accomplish in the play, so in that iteration, much of God’s opening monologue has to be given to the work of those first few days. In fact, in this play he doesn’t enter into dialogue with the angels at all, he creates them and then is offstage for the rest of the play.

            York’s God is slightly more interactive, naming out Lucifer specifically. But he shares an interesting feature with the Towneley God: in both plays, the fall happens without an explicit directive from God, as if Lucifer’s words alone cause him to be spontaneously ejected from Heaven. As God does reappear to close the play with a monologue about what has happened and why, one has different staging options for the actual moment of the Fall, and could choose to depict God’s actions as direct.

            The Chester God is particularly active in his relationship with the angels, speaking with them at length, and picking Lucifer and Lightborne out especially, as if he knows they have special capacity that may also lead them astray. (One reference describes his commandments to them, not to let pride dominate them, as a dare.) His response to their downfall is almost sorrowful rather than angry.

            N-Town’s version of God dominates the short play, with almost half of its lines belonging to him. What stands out about him is that he expounds on his nature as a trinity more than the others. Chester’s also speaks of this (York’s and Towneley’s do not), but it feels less pronounced in the much-longer play.

            What one takes away from looking at the “Creation and Fall of Angels” plays as a comparative group is just how different medieval perspectives were on the Bible story and how to dramatise it. These Gods are not identical, and their angels, whether good or bad, seem to have quite different characters. From the standpoint of staging the plays, we can look at this as a chance for creative license: although the characters of our particular play seem to think and behave in a certain way, there is scope for seeing them as individual rather than merely as a “type”, and we can do so not because our modern sensibilities have taught us to approach the theatre that way, but because even in the Middle Ages, everyone saw things just a little bit differently.

Director’s Notes: Comedy Tonight!

Posted on by under French Farces, Historic, Musings

It’s #FarcesFriday, and our director, Laura-Elizabeth Rice, is back with reflections on choosing to work with medieval French farces, and how we chose our plays.

Two memories:

I’m six years old, listening to a group of boys sitting around one’s school desk. One of them is using a hand under his armpit to make noises that mimic gas, and they’re laughing like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. And I find myself thinking, I can’t wait to be an adult, so people won’t find fart jokes funny anymore, because they aren’t! (Oh, the innocence of youth!)

I’m eighteen and in university, in a class that’s supposed to be on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but our professor has decided that, instead, we’re going to be focusing on the question of “what is comedy?” He’s a young, early-career lecturer; it’s painfully obvious that he’s anxious to spit out the silver spoon he was born with, and his way of doing this is to argue strenuously that slapstick is the only valid form of comedy, because if you like anything else, you’re being a snob. I don’t think slapstick is funny at all. I’ll spend the semester arguing that watching someone be injured or made to feel embarrassed isn’t amusing, and that I don’t think that inherently makes me stuck-up.

I’m sharing these memories because it’s deeply ironic that I, of all people, should be spending time working on farces, a genre that relies heavily on physical and/or bodily humour… and irony is often a foundational part of comedy. Moreover, it’s worth knowing a little bit of that background, to help explain why, of all the farces in all the theatre in all the world (or at least, in France!), we should have settled on Master Pierre Pathelin and The Washtub for our upcoming reading.

Medieval comedy isn’t absent from the English canon of dramatic literature, but it’s quite limited, and exists entirely within wider dramatic genre that aren’t focused on laughs. Joseph’s Trouble About Mary is pretty funny, because it’s a pragmatic look at a Biblical moment that is usually held in pure reverence. The Second Shepherds’ Play is a strange combination of comedic folk play married to the more standard Christmas story. Our old friend, Mankind, has much bawdy humour, but its purpose is to be held up as an example of what not to be. There just isn’t a vast body of secular comedy from medieval England that exists solely because people wanted a laugh. 

It’s different in France. There are hundreds of farces from medieval France. Unfortunately, the majority aren’t available in translation; if you don’t read French- and medieval French at that!- these plays remain largely a literal and metaphorical closed book. This is changing (most notably, several collections translated and adapted by Jody Enders, which I highly recommend as entertaining reading even if you have zero interest in putting a farce onstage), but a lot– the majority- of the enormous body of farce remains just out of reach. So while I knew that, in deciding to present a comedy, we would be looking past English borders, the language question meant limitation among riches.

That said… once you start reading what is available in English, you confront the challenge of translation that isn’t about language or even France vs. England, but about cultures across time. My undergraduate lecturer was correct that slapstick has indeed stood the test of chronology- medieval people would have understood those six year old boys!- but the line of what is acceptable has definitely shifted. It’s quite shocking to realise that a significant percentage of medieval comedy is about violence, particularly domestic. Imagine watching a “Punch & Judy” show but with actors instead of puppets; men and women may give as good as they get, but the violence is unrelenting. There are those who argue that it is so exaggerated that it becomes comic, because it’s completely unrealistic, but we still felt it was over the line where we felt comfortable. 

The Washtub is marital comedy, but it still works as comedy if one ignores or excises stage directions that indicate the couple being violent towards one another- that is a disposable “extra” that isn’t necessary dramatically. Even without that, there is physical comedy, and it follows the slapstick trope of exaggeration of physical events: it’s unlikely that a grown, fully conscious woman would drown by falling into even a large medieval washtub in her own home; all she has to do is stand up! Thus much of the comedy centres around the absence of injury that the audience appreciates, but the character doesn’t; the rest is clever one-upmanship between spouses, of the sort that is still a staple of television sitcoms.

Pierre Pathelin is probably the best-known medieval French farce- possibly the best-known medieval French play, full stop, and I suspect that one of the reasons this is true is because it almost totally lacks violence-as-humour, so it hasn’t turned the corner into being more offensive than funny. It pokes fun at lawyers (another tradition that has carried on!), at unearned pomposity, and the idea of the clever scoundrel getting away with one-upping those considered his “betters” still resonates. It also includes a twist at the end that reminds me that my university lecturer did make some good points: reversal of expectation can be one of the criteria for defining comedy. In Pathelin, everybody is trying to cheat everyone else, and virtually everyone has some comeuppance along the way. 

I suspect that the same thing that made me read these plays and say, I want to do this!, is the same thing that has made them the best known among a fairly obscure genre: their surprisingly delicate balance between the hyperbolic actions of slapstick, and the jokes that ask the audience to contribute some thought or knowledge. You can appreciate them for exactly what they lay out in front of you- isn’t a man bleating “Baaa” in a courtroom ridiculous?- or you can be entertained because you know something about law and what Pathelin is faking. Or both. Meet them where you are. The medieval French writers gave us plays which understood what neither a younger version of me, nor my university teacher, did: that “funny” needn’t have a hierarchy; there are only different, and complimentary, ways of making an audience laugh.

Director’s Notes: Where to Begin

Posted on by under Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

Some notes from our director, Laura-Elizabeth Rice, on where her work with The War in Heavenbegan, getting to know source material, and what she’s learned so far about angels and devils.

In the beginning was the word…

Well, in the theatre, the beginning is the word: the script. Ours, for The War in Heaven and the rest of the Mystery Plays, is a brand-new translation by Dr. Alan Heaven. As a word geek, I’m enjoying getting to know a new iteration, thinking about the words that are chosen, hearing them out, rolling them around in my mouth, considering the echoes of the original, and contemplating why different translators make the choices that they do. Of course, the Mystery Plays are themselves the product of adaptation, of the stories of the Bible, filtered through medieval tradition and understanding. How much tradition of the ancient world influenced the Bible is a much deeper theological debate than I’m willing to entertain, but suffice to say that by the time we’re looking at Mystery Plays today, there is not one “beginning” point but many.

I decided, however, to start with the place that medieval people would have considered the source text, which is the Bible. There are, of course, many different translations of that, too; for the sake of purity, I should probably have consulted one of the earlier Latin iterations- likely the Latin Vulgate- but, confession!, I don’t read Latin particularly well. As a creature of the twenty-first century, instead I hit the internet for one of those webpages that shows various versions side by side, for comparison. Of course it cannot include all the variations of Biblical translation, so I cannot say that any of my discoveries are conclusive. But hope they can be considered a starting point for understanding the play that I hope I can bring out for actors and audiences!

God as a concept seems simultaneously completely obvious (an omniscient, all-powerful entity), and completely ineffable, even- especially- if one is not a person from, or of, a faith tradition. But that, at least, is an answer I could give if someone needed a definition. Yet I realised that if I were asked, “What is an angel? What is a fallen angel?” I actually wouldn’t have a good answer. I’ll come back to this at a later date, but the point now is that I wanted to know exactly what the Bible had to say about them, since their actions drive the play. 

Angels are scattered throughout the Bible- a search suggested there are approximately 300 references to them, depending on which translation you’re looking at- and yet they are never very well defined. The word “angel” means “messenger”, and that’s the capacity in which they appear most frequently, as interlocutors between God and people. Sometimes they are corporeal and sometimes they aren’t, but when they do have a physical presence, they have hands and faces, and sometimes accessorize with a sword or a staff. They can interact with people physically as well as vocally. They’re impervious to fire, and can appear and disappear. One of the few absolutely stated facts about angels is that they don’t have marriages, although whether this implies that they have genders or not isn’t clear. Particularly interesting in terms of the workings of a war in heaven, they don’t just intercede with humans to bring messages; they’re also often God’s agent of smiting, striking people down when they’ve displeased the deity. They also don’t die, which certainly has implications for the outcome of a war in heaven, and perhaps why being sent to Hell is their punishment for rebellion.

Fallen angels aren’t really called such, at least not in any of the translations that I’ve seen, and Satan gets fewer than 50 namechecks. But there are several occasions when Satan (his name means “the tempter” or “the accuser”) hangs out with angels, sometimes those held up in contrast to him, and sometimes with the implication that he has angels which belong specifically to him, separate from God’s. Satan can “masquerade as an angel of light”, which one can read to imply that he is an angel in opposition to light- i.e. an angel of darkness- or perhaps that he is no angel at all. After all, he’s also equated in Revelation with a dragon and a serpent. There is altogether quite a bit less in the Bible about fallen angels or Satan than one might assume, given the weight they carry culturally in both the Middle Ages and today. 

The War in Heaven is, traditionally, called “The Fall of Angels” in the medieval plays. Along with the creation of Heaven, it’s part of the first play in all four cycles. I had therefore assumed, as medieval people seem to have done, that this was a story from the earliest idea of time, in Genesis. But in the Bible, it makes only a brief appearance, in the book of Revelation (12:7-9), at the end of the Bible. There is an earlier allusion (Luke 10:18) where Jesus says he “saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”, but there is no further detail of the context in which this occurred. And since Jesus isn’t born until the New Testament, presumably the angelic fall wouldn’t be contemporaneous with the creation of the world. I actually quite like the circularity of this, as if the end is in the beginning and the beginning is in the end.

I was surprised that these characters, and the story of the war in heaven, did not feature more prominently in the Bible, given how strong the narrative, and subsequent artistic, traditions seem to be. On the one hand, creating them dramatically almost from whole cloth is a real challenge! On the other hand, it also means the possibilities are endless… almost. It’s still medieval drama, after all! For now, what it really tells me is that I have a lot more research to do, because clearly a great deal of tradition had built up around these characters and events prior to and during the Middle Ages. And that, reader, is part of our play…..

An Exciting Announcement: York Mystery Plays 2026!

Posted on by under Drama, Historic, History, Mystery Plays, News, Production, York Mystery Plays 2026

We are still seeking expressions of interest for our backstage & offstage teams for The War in Heaven – please see our Jobs & Opportunities page.
We are particularly interested in hearing from potential Waggon Masters and Stage Managers.

We’re back!

It’s been a challenging series of years for us, as it has been for many small theatre groups across the UK, but we are thrilled to tell you that we don’t just have news to tease, we have exciting news right now.

This summer, the Mystery Plays are returning to the city centre of York, and HIDden will be with them!

The Mystery Plays is, effectively, the parent stem of HIDden Theatre. We exist because our founders were involved with a performance in the 2010 plays, and we decided we wanted to keep exploring and presenting historic drama from the past. So we came back in 2014, when the current team started working together. 

We all have incredibly happy memories of that experience, and have hoped circumstances would allow us to return. This year, after all the difficulties of the past years- through a pandemic and many changes of personal circumstance- we’re thrilled beyond measure to be working on The War in Heaven (traditionally The Fall of the Angels). It’s the first play in the cycle, so we’ll be leading the parade! It’s quite an exciting play, depicting both Heaven and Hell, and sets up the struggle between good and evil.

Along the way to production, we’re looking forward to sharing not just our journey, but also some history of the plays and the medieval world with you, and we’ll also be pointing out what else is going on, because this year it’s not just two days of performance, it’s an entire festival. So there’ll be lots of ways to discover the Mystery Plays… and lots of ways to get involved.

On that note… we are going to be acting as the “guild of waifs and strays”. That means that if you’re someone who has an interest in participating in the Plays, but you’re not a member of a group that’s already involved, we’re here! Whether you love to perform or you’re interested in backstage projects like building or costuming, or you’d like to be part of our waggon crew, there are going to be lots of opportunities. Get in touch!

The full cycle of plays will be performed on 28 June and 5 July, with the full festival arranged around those dates. We hope to see you there!

Watch this space

Posted on by under News, Production

We have exciting news coming imminently in 2026…

Another get together for York’s Theatre People – Saturday 12th November 1.00pm

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Casting Call, Drama, Musings, News, Production

Following the success of our impromptu get together for members of York’s Theatre community last month, we are running the event again – this time with a little more notice!

This is a chance for anyone involved or interested in theatre to chat and network with like-minded people and we are considering making it a regular occurrence.

Check out the event on Facebook – we hope to see you there!

York Theatre Meet & Greet, Saturday 8th October 2pm

Posted on by under Casting Call, Drama, News, Production

We’ve all come up against obstacles when working on projects.  Many of us have shows and the like that we are working on – be they in production or still at the idea stage – that we would like to either market or ask for help with.  Some people may even want to get a foot in the door of the York theatre scene.

So, we have decided to throw an impromptu get together for the theatre people of York; partly to have the chance to introduce ourselves to some new people but also because we know the theatrical community has a lot of knowledge and willigness to share, but not everyone knows how to approach those in the know.

Check out the event on Facebook – we hope to see you there!

Director’s Notes: Auditions

Posted on by under A Journey with Jonson, Musings, News, Production

As we prepare for A Journey with Jonson auditions, our Artistic Director shares her thoughts on the process from a director’s point of view.

There is a fascinating documentary about the casting of a revival of A Chorus Line, called Every Little Step, which is well worth a watch for some insight into an audition process. Of course, it deals with a major Broadway musical production, a process which is months long and a much more complicated situation than I’ve ever had to face. What I like about it, though, is that it gives you just as much perspective from a directing and casting standpoint as from the actors’, and you realise how much is a sort of visceral reaction to a combination between the specifics of each character (and how well the directors have to know those nuances) and the unique things that various actors bring to the part, which may or may not work as desired.

The context HIDden usually works in is considerably less prolonged and arguably less complex. Still, as I’ve said in the past, I find auditions to be the single most nerve-wracking part of an entire production. In addition to the high stakes nature of them, there is the fact that nobody seems to agree on the “Best Way” to cast a show. Every possible option comes with benefits and drawbacks.

In contemplating auditions as a system, I pulled a few of my old university textbooks off the shelf to see what they had to impart as far as “advice” on auditions, and this was when I realised one of the other reasons that auditions are such a nerve-wracking process: almost everything that is written on the “how to” of auditioning is aimed at performers. One of my directing textbooks doesn’t even include a mention of auditioning, which strikes me as overlooking something rather significant: casts don’t just appear onstage, fully formed, from out of nowhere! A quick search of a large online retailer also resulted in a similar dearth of textual discussion – lots of “secrets of casting directors for actors”, not much on “how to make the most of auditions for a director”.

For such a crucial part of the directing process, one would think more attention would be paid to it. I suspect that the reason it seems to get glossed over is precisely because there is no “Best Way” (and why it’s sort of nice to watch something like a documentary which shows the vicissitudes of the process). It’s not something you can really reduce to paper, to a checklist of how to. I’m not entirely sure it’s something that can be taught at all. The truth is, an awful lot of casting comes down to instinct. Which is not to say that directors shouldn’t be able to give actors fairly concrete feedback, reasons why they did well, or maybe even more crucially, ways that they can improve and things they should work on; just that, ultimately, there is something indefinable that makes one particular person work for a part and someone else not quite fit it as well.

As I suspect is true of most directors, I’ve evolved a process that seems to work, very much based on the particularities of the kind of theatre that HIDden does. One situation that we’ve often faced is that actors have to get their heads (and tongues) around archaic scripts; even translated, they can be rough going for people who haven’t done much historic drama. This has been a big factor in the evolution of the system that we use, which tends to include asking actors to bring a reading from something they’ve performed in the past: I want to see people doing something familiar and comfortable, when they think they’re at their best, rather than only when they may be hampered by challenging language on top of a new script and character. I like to see auditions as the question “what can you do best?” rather than “what can’t you do?” The hope is that this pulls out enough information for that sixth sense to go to work and whisper “this person will fit well in Part X”.

But no matter what system is in place, ultimately that’s what it comes down to, that little interior voice that can’t quite be quantified. And that’s why I don’t hold my breath for a book to appear on the “Best Possible Way to Audition Actors for Historic Drama”. It will always be a balance between intellectual rationale and gut instinct. That probably doesn’t offer much wisdom or insight for actors, but maybe it should be read as encouragement: if I can’t tell you exactly what will work, your best bet is just to do your best.

Creating a Legacy

Posted on by under A Journey with Jonson, Academic Curiosity, Ben Jonson, Musings, Shakespeare

Our Artistic Director gives some of her thoughts on how Ben Jonson’s publication of his folio of Works may have been an attempt by him to influence the legacy he woud leave behind.

One of the major reasons for including Ben Jonson in our 2016 programme is the 400th anniversary of the publication of his first folio of Works, an event somewhat overlooked by the general public due to Shakespeare also having a 400th anniversary (that of his death). As with most historical figures, the motivation behind Jonson’s decision to publish a selection of his writings at a certain point in his life is not really known. He was one of the first people in history to publish his plays and poems within his own lifetime, and with his own editorial hand at the helm; a fact which shows that such an occurrence was not the norm.

The first idea I had about what may have compelled Jonson to take this unusual step was to wonder if perhaps his attachment to the concept of being a ‘poet’, and his apparent belief that this was somehow a more pure vocation than ‘playwright’ (as I have pondered before), meant that he drew a distinction between plays, which are written to be enacted, and poems, which are generally just read. Almost immediately, the holes in that argument were apparent. First, if Jonson was truly ashamed of play-making, he would not have included any of his dramas in the publication, yet his folio included nine plays, thirteen masques, and six further ‘entertainments’. Second, the line between poetry and playwriting is blurred when one considers verse drama of the type that was in fashion in Jonson’s era.

Moreover, poetry isn’t just for reading in solitude. Poets frequently share their work with audiences at readings, and this would have been even more the case for those during the Renaissance who were subsidised by wealthy patrons; performing their works for their noble supporters was part and parcel of their job. Going back further, poetry was performance. Although rarely presented as such today, we would do well to remember that Beowulf or The Odyssey were part of an oral culture, poetry that was only ever shared through performance, never originally through someone sitting down and opening a book. In antiquity or early medieval times, the distinction between poetry and drama was extremely blurry indeed.

Jonson was part of the first era when a dramatist could hope to have two audiences: those in the seats at the theatre, and those reading the play script subsequently. Publishing individual plays in those days may have been a way of advertising them, of keeping them in circulation for second or third runs. Publishing a collection together, though, was beyond advertising; an exercise in the control of posterity. Jonson must surely have had a sense that he was creating something, to use the words he would later write for Shakespeare’s posthumous folio, “for all time”, and that in doing so during his own lifetime, he got to have the final say about what was included. It is impossible to imagine today what it must have been like for those alive during the early eras of printing, to first realise that they could leave something behind that could potentially last forever, and not just in one precious manuscript, but in a form which could be replicated and thus have it spread out to an ever-widening audience. Previously that kind of legacy would have been only available to the highest reaches of society; now those in middle class employment, like writers for the theatre, could contemplate leaving an echo of themselves for the future.

The legacy Jonson left through the publication of his folio of Works came with an extra irony attached. Arguably more famous in some circles than Shakespeare in his own period, Jonson’s publication inspired that of Shakespeare’s work a few years later (an event in which Shakespeare, many years dead, did not get a say); without Jonson’s Works we might not have Shakespeare’s, which overtime threw Jonson’s into shadow. It’s hard to imagine that Jonson intended such an outcome resulting from a project he may have begun in furtherance of his own fame. Which, in a sense, brings the topic full circle: proof that publication within one’s own lifetime, no matter how sincere an attempt at controlling one’s own imprint upon history, can’t guarantee control over future circumstances. Even the ideas and information contained in printed works, like that in plays onstage, become the communal property of the wider world once they have been shared with others, whether that is across the footlights, or on the pages of a book.

Sympathy for the Devil

Posted on by under A Journey with Jonson, Academic Curiosity, Ben Jonson, Musings, Production, The Devil is an Ass

As Ben Prusiner nears completion of his The Devil is an Ass adaptation for our A Journey with Jonson project, our Artistic Director gives some of her views on the ongoing popularity of devils and demons on stage.

One of the major plot points in Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass hinges on the fact that its gullible central character, Fitzdottrel, desperately wants to meet a real devil. He is fascinated by the idea, thinking that meeting a devil will help him gain further prosperity, but also simply for the novelty factor. The idea that the devil is usually considered evil, scheming, and generally considered not conducive towards the furtherance of a good life is lost on him.

This is, of course, a comic aspect of the situation, but it’s reminiscent of a phenomenon I’ve noticed with medieval drama: almost everyone wants to play the devil or work on the plays with demonic characters. Although there may be an assumption that medieval people would have preferred playing the holy characters (in an era of wider, less contested faith, it is possible there was more cache in playing someone holy than there might be today), there is some evidence that the devils were just as popular then as now. Considering this general trend, Fitzdottrel’s fascination seems less the product of sheer idiocy (although I suspect that the foolishness of it was an intentionally comic aspect) and more a normal human process taken to the extreme. What is it that makes actors want to play demonic parts, that makes audiences find demons some of the most entertaining bits of the show, and that makes Fitzdottrel long to meet one?

There is varied psychological opinion on the matter, about transgression and pushing acceptable social boundaries and such, but I don’t think you need a psychology degree to see that, dramatically, these issues give devils and demons a broader pallet onstage. Modes of movement, speech, and mannerism will be somewhat constrained for a “good” character, whereas if you’re playing one of Hell’s imps, it’s usually permissible to move about, shout, scream, spout gibberish or adopt funny accents, or even scramble your lines a bit – after all, isn’t that just what a devil really would do? For anyone who likes to ham it up a bit, the devil’s your chance. And for audiences who want a laugh rather than a sermon, the devil can often offer a lot more in this area.

For some reason we have come to regard “stillness” with decorum, decency, and goodness. Unfortunately, stillness doesn’t tend to make for especially entertaining theatre, and even with all actors doing exactly what they should for their characters, it’s easy for a lively demon to upstage the most dignified holy personage. It’s one of the things that was picked up by those who were generally against theatre: the audience ends up cheering for the wrong person, and therefore, in Reformation or Puritan-era eyes, theatre is a naughty thing for encouraging such things.

Jonson manages to turn this on its head. His devil-come-to-earth, though earnest in the pursuit of his craft (making mischief), is actually really bad at it, and so the audience can find him amusing without actually siding with the cause of evil (laughing at him, rather than with him). Even more interesting is the fact that, throughout the play, the functional “devil” – the one who causes misery and mischief, and who really does behave like the titular ass – is Fitzdottrel. Not only does he make his long-suffering, loyal wife miserable, but when he does meet an actual devil, he doesn’t believe that Pug is what he claims to be, thereby revealing that he has no clue about the reality of thing he most desperately wishes to encounter; and then he proceeds to make Pug pretty miserable, too.

The interest and attraction of the demonic was more an issue and field of study in Jonson’s time than it had been in the Middle Ages (as exhibited by the simultaneous upswing in accusations of, and books written about, witchcraft), but like all of history it didn’t spring up from nowhere, and Jonson knew that. It has frequently been noted that, earlier in his writings, he had disdained the fashion for theatre about the supernatural, and so his writing of The Devil is an Ass may seem a contradiction of that. I wonder, though, if this play isn’t Jonson mocking his own cynicism: if he finds stage devils unconvincing, would he be any cleverer in spotting a real one than Fitzdottrel? In a sense, Jonson has written a new type of morality play, one defined less by transparent allegory (his characters still bear names suggestive of their personality, in most cases, even if they are not directly representing sins or virtues) and the black-and-white kind of morality offered up by religion, and more by revealing the complexity of right-and-wrong that exists in the real world.

Maybe that is why people of all eras have found the devils of the stage so intriguing. Characters intended to show us virtue often seem unapproachable, an ideal we can never reach, but the demons and devils, who almost never come across as all bad, give us a window into the kind of moral ambiguity that we face every day. Unlike Fitzdottrel (and perhaps Jonson himself) we are less likely, today, to be burdened with the question of whether or not they are real or even realistic; they – and a play like The Devil is an Ass in particular – remind us that evil intentions can yield kind results, that the most well-intended ideas can result in suffering, and that ideas like “good” and “evil” rest at least partially in a disputed space where perception and opinion leave a lot of ambiguity in between.