Prayer Acts in Late Sixteenth-Century Biblical Plays in Poland
Jolanta Szpilewska
Central European University, Budapest
Prayer renders itself to various kinds of theoretical examination. In the field of literary and theatre studies it may be considered as a piece of religious lyric. In the case of prayer episodes in the plays, we can analyze prayer patterns, their function and relation to the overall literary structure. The present paper will be concerned with the form and function of prayers seen as certain finite entities within a larger dramatic piece. Prayer acts will be analyzed in the light of the speech act theory. The evidence will be drawn from the late sixteenth-century vernacular Biblical plays surviving in Poland. Due to space limitation only three plays have been selected for the study: two Easter plays, and a play of Abraham and Isaac.
In any of its diverse forms, prayer is first of all a verbal expression of longing for God on the part of the praying. Most of the definitions of prayer evolve from two classical definitions. Thus, according to St. John of Damascus, prayer is "an elevation of the heart towards God" while Saint Augustine defines prayer as a conversation with God when he says: "Your prayer is a conversation with God. During the Gospel reading God speaks to you, and during the prayer you speak to God." Modern authors stress the two-fold nature of prayer, the words of God complementing the words of man and thus enabling the two to meet in the act of prayer. The invocation of God’s name on the part of man and God’s subsequent response take the form of a dialogue, the fact confirmed by the choice of the second person singular pronouns in a prayer. It is this grammatical category that makes us add one more criterion to the definition of a prayer in order to distinguish a prayer or an invocation in the second person from a purely meditative piece that lacks the immediateness introduced by means of the second person singular. We may thus suggest a definition of the prayer as that of the "direct verbal address to God on the part of man." By introducing the phrase "direct verbal address" we may exclude from the present study those utterances in the plays that relate to God and His attributes, that are contemplative texts, and therefore might at greater length be considered as prayers, but which nevertheless are not dialogues with God.
What the use of the second person pronominal and verbal forms in prayers shows, is that language may be used within certain conventions, and, more generally, within a set form of words, and thus get transformed into speech acts whose task is to bring about certain effects in the speaker. By recognizing this use of language we refer to the theory of speech acts developed by J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle. One of the followers of the two language philosophers, Joseph A. Porter, calls speech acts theory "the only method we have for thoroughly systematic description of verbal action." While speech acts theory does not exhaust possible readings of prayer acts in drama, it certainly contributes to our understanding of their function and place in the performance. Sandy Petrey is an advocate for applying this theory in the study of drama in general, and she identifies drama as the literary genre most suited for speech act analysis. At the same time she reflects on the double nature of theatrical communication and divides speech acts in drama into on stage and extra stage speech acts. This is a valuable distinction for the purpose of the present paper.
Before we proceed to the analysis of the prayers in the selected plays, it would be worthwhile to present basic tenets of the speech act theory. In the 1950s J. L. Austin distinguished between two types of utterances: constative or declarative (those that say) and performative (those that do). In other words he argued that not all our language describes reality, some aims at getting something done. The forms of language that bring certain effect on the speaker and on the listener have been called illocutionary acts, i.e. those that do something IN saying. In the case of constatives the utterer informs the listener about a certain state of affairs and the content of the utterance can be assessed with regard to its truth-value; whereas with the performatives such considerations fail to apply. We may thus argue whether the statement "the King of France is bald" is true or false, but we cannot do so in the case of the statement "I warn you against going there", which is an act of warning or advise. In the case of the illocutionary acts certain conditions have to be met for the utterance to perform its function, these are the so-called felicity conditions. They determine whether the utterance was felicitous, i.e. successful. Some of these felicity conditions require that
Thus, declaratives in speech theory can be either true or false, while the performatives can be either happy or unhappy, depending on the felicity conditions. Within the group of performative speech acts, Austin further distinguished three types of acts: locutionary act– which is simply a grammatical and meaningful statement, illocutionary act – that usually accompanies locution (for example, questions usually perform illocutionary act of questioning, statements that of declaring, imperatives that of ordering etc.) The third type of performative act is the so-called perlocutionary act that is performed UPON the listener BY saying. Thus, one’s illocutionary act of requesting something may bring the perlocutionary effect of giving one the requested item.
Searle introduced further typology of illocutionary acts, four of which will be selected as particularly relevant to the study of prayer acts: request, assertion or statement, expressing gratitude, greeting. In the plays analyzed we can distinguish between several types of prayer. Among them, we may list a pleading prayer (a supplication), a prayer of adoration, a thanksgiving prayer, and a prayer of welcome. A single prayer may combine all four of these, just like any utterance may combine different illocutionary acts. To these four basic types of prayer correspond four illocutionary acts already mentioned: request, affirmation, thanksgiving, and greeting.
The table shows possible correspondence of the types of prayer acts spotted in Polish Biblical plays to the basic illocutionary acts as described by J. L. Searle. The three types of conditions are the felicity conditions.
|
SPEECH ACT/ PRAYER TYPE |
PREPARATORY CONDITION |
SINCERITY CONDITION |
ESSENTIAL CONDITION |
|
Request/ Pleading prayer (supplication) |
|
S wants H to do A |
Counts as an attempt to get H to do A |
|
Assert-State-Affirm/ Prayer of adoration |
|
S believes p. |
Counts as an undertaking to the effect that p. represents the real state of affairs |
|
Thank/ thanksgiving prayer |
A benefits S and S believes that A benefits A |
S feels grateful or appreciative for A |
Counts as an expression of gratitude or appreciation |
|
Greet/ prayer of welcome |
E is in H’s interest and S believes E is in H’s interest |
S is pleased at E |
Counts as an expression of pleasure at E. |
The prayers scattered in religious plays from early modern Poland form a group of speech acts that bear witness to one of the many possible uses of the word on the stage. To come back to the already mentioned distinction between the on stage and extra stage speech acts, some of these prayers belong to the on stage speech acts, as they are uttered only by the dramatis personae and only within the context of a certain episode. In some plays, prayers extend their function and show up as both on stage and extra stage speech acts, as they are elicited by the Narrator/Prologus in-between the Biblical scenes and they are probably supposed to engage the audiences. They remain thematically connected to the preceding dramatic episodes and thus make the audience once again live through the episode just performed and more intensely apprehend the moral point of the specific part of the play.
The fact that prayers function both within the dramatic narrative as well as in-between the episodes, shows that prayer was perceived as a dynamic verbal material that could be introduced on several levels of narrative provided that the prayer met all the required felicity conditions. When speaking about the double existence of the prayer acts: their functioning in the dramatic world as well as in the real world of social relationships, we have to stress that their double role was possible due to the playwrights’ knowledge of the rules governing prayer acts. The rules that were at the core of all set prayers in liturgical prayer books. What was at the basis of the dramatic prayer acts was the conventional verbal form and behaviour related to the act of praying. Stanley Fish stresses the role of conventional verbal behaviour underlying the speech acts theory:
"Intentions are available to anyone who invokes the proper (publicly known and agreed upon) procedures, and it also means that anyone who invokes those procedures (knowing that they will be recognized as such) takes the responsibility of that intention."
Both the prayers in the dramatic text, as well as these on the meta-level seem to meet these requirements: on stage and extra stage prayer speech acts involve a speaker authorised to address God (a sinner confessing and seeking God’s forgiveness, a Patriarch praising God, a King paying tribute to the baby Christ etc.) He is shown in a context that allows the audience to suppose that he genuinely seeks forgiveness (Saint Peter’ solitary prayer), liberation (the imprisoned Patriarchs), or that the speaker is genuinely grateful for what he/she gives thanks for (the Three Magi, Virgin Mary, and Joseph in Nativity plays, the praying Patriarchs in the Harrowing of Hell scenes). Moreover, the praying are shown as being committed by their assertion of God’s omnipotence or charity to that particular belief, their utterance/prayer act starts counting as a particular kind of social or even metaphysical commitment or undertaking.
Being an intersubjective phenomenon, the speech act cannot be successfully performed unless the speaker has the listener to recognize his illocutionary intentions. This recognition on the part of God is best seen in the suplicatory prayer acts, which usually bring about God’s response to the entreaties of the praying (Saint Peter being forgiven by Christ, Patriarchs liberated from Hell, Isaac saved from the stake). The recognition takes place only in the on stage speech acts, but on their basis the audience members are being persuaded about the possible recognition of their extra stage prayer acts, and the possibility to get involved in these is provided within the frame of the play or right after it. The prayers for the audience sometimes appear in the form of the religious song, or a short invocation to God.
We often speak about the visualization of the Word of God in the form of a Biblical play, about the translation of the Gospel narrative into the language of drama and religious performance. The same attempts are made in the case of the prayers: prayers are being staged, the moment of prayer is underlined by some dramatic gesture on the part of the praying, although, in general, there in little potential for a lavish staging of the prayer. It is rather the appearance of prayer act, and the words used that make for the effect rather than the staging itself.
Polish Biblical plays from the late sixteenth century supply a considerable evidence of the use of prayers, their possible staging, and linguistic patterns. The play that obviously relies on the form of prayer in its overall dramatic structure and that has a number of short prayer acts included in-between as well as within the particular scenes, is a play from around the year 1582 entitled Historyja o Chwalebnym Zmartwychwstaniu Pańskim (The Story of the Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord. It has come down in a printed version from southern Poland and its cover bears the name of a Pauline monk, Nicolaus from Wilkowieck who was either an author or a compiler of the play. It was extremely popular in its days, and its numerous redactions with different versification patters appear as late as the eighteenth century.
The narrative of the The Glorious Resurrection relies on several sources: the Scriptures, the Church Tradition and apocryphal writings. However, scenes such as the Harrowing of Hell, prayers of the Patriarchs in the Hell, Jesus choosing an envoy to be sent to Virgin Mary and to tell her about the opening of the gates of Hell, Jesus meeting His Mother, Jesus speaking to Peter after the Resurrection – these scenes might have come from additional sources such as popular Easter songs, sermon collections or even an Italian play La Rappresentazione della Resurrezione di Gesù Cristo that saw at least eight editions between 1559 –1572.
The earliest printed version of The Story of the Glorious Resurrection of Our Lord follows a tri-partite structure: first comes a short reading of a Gospel harmony from the last days of Jesus and the events right after His resurrection, the reading is followed by the dramatic representation of the same episode, to be followed by an appropriate verse of a religious song. The chant, being optional, but still strongly advised by the editor, is selected in a way that it sums up the events just presented and thus seems to lead the audience towards a deeper understanding of the initial Gospel passage.
The earliest printed version of the The Story of the Glorious Resurrection shows two uses of the prayer, some prayers appear to be extra stage prayers, i.e. they are community prayers in the form of religious songs placed in-between the episodes. Prayers of this type are situated outside the dramatic text proper, but they undoubtedly belong to the play showing that the play is both an act of entertainment as well as a religious act. The play has also several prayers uttered by the dramatis personae that might be called on stage type prayers.
At the beginning of the play the traditional resurrection song is placed in order to calm down the audience. Later the verses of this and other traditional songs are evenly distributed throughout the play and their appearance in a play becomes a prayer act for the audience. A song thus transforms the entire play into an act of piety. It also serves a very down-to-earth role of calming down the audience before the play, as is recorded in the stage directions: "First, for calming down the people, you can sing once [the title of a Polish Easter song follows]"
Apart from some miscellaneous songs (like the opening chant and the song of the guardians of the tomb), the community song appears 13 times per 1469 lines of the dramatic text which makes the chant come up more or less every 113 lines. This introduces variety into the play, as the moment of silence during the Gospel reading is followed by the lively acting part that culminates in a communal singing. The chants are both Polish and Latin. The Latin part includes four Easter tropes: "Sepulto Domino", "Dum transisset Sabbatum" "et valde mane una Sabbatorum" and two Easter songs "Advenisti desirabilis", "Surrexit Dominus". Polish songs are traditional Easter songs distributed in verses of two or three throughout the play. In some cases appropriate verses of the Polish song follow the Latin one.
Apart from the community’s prayers, The Story of the Glorious Resurrection includes some that are said by the dramatis personae. The tone of these prayers varies from the expression of sorrow through joy to the adoration of God. The first in the series of dramatic prayers is the prayer of Patriarch Abraham waiting for Jesus in the Harrowing of Hell scene. When Jesus is already at the gates of Hell getting ready to destroy the last walls, Abraham, who cannot see Him yet, pronounces his encouraging words in the form of a prayer. Thus he says to Jesus: "Come do not tarry/delay, bring us your comfort, set us free from this imprisonment/ take us to your Holy Kingdom." This is an expression of the longing for the final salvation and its effect is heightened by the fact that while Abraham is unaware of the coming of Christ, the audience can actually see Jesus approaching the walls that will be torn down in a moment. There is no direct response on the part of Jesus to this dramatic prayer, on the contrary, the prayer makes Cerberus attack Abraham with the cry "Ad idem! Ad idem!" which seems to be one of the last temporary victories of the Devils on the stage. However, Jesus answers the second greeting of Abraham a few minutes later after the wall has been demolished. Once Hell is conquered, Jesus announces his arrival with a short speech and Abraham responds to it with a prayer of adoration, asking Christ once again to deliver them from the present slavery. Thus, Abraham performs an illocutionary act while greeting Christ with the words "welcome" and with his two prayers of welcome. The prayers express the joy of the imprisoned Patriarchs, and let the audience know about the time they have spent in the slavery. The last joyful prayer of Abraham is actually an introductory monologue before a song. After the song, it is Adam’s turn to pay tribute to risen Christ. Adam gives hundred welcomes in his speech, but his adoration prayer turns into the enumeration of his sins. By changing the tone of his prayer, Adam stresses the power and charity of God.
Virgin Mary is the last to say welcoming prayer in the scene of the Harrowing of Hell. She kneels down in the act of adoration when her Son comes to console her. There follows Mary’s prayer that might be interpreted as a reversal of the planctus. Virgin Mary greets the divine body of Christ by addressing his head and limbs and using the diminutives. She finally speaks to all bodily members of Christ t once asking them to let them being kissed by her and allow her to enjoy their lovely sight. This prayer pattern reminds of planctus where the Virgin usually recounts the wounds of Her Son. The context of the Resurrection transforms her former sorrowful prayer into a joyous one while preserving the pattern of the prayer usually associated with the planctus.
Undoubtedly, the central prayer in the The Glorious Story of the Resurrection is Saint Peter’s prayer in the cave that appears after the scene of the sepulchre visitation. Peter’s prayer has a long-standing tradition both in apocryphal writings as well as in a number of religious plays. The appearance of this episode in The Story of the Glorious Resurrection marks a sudden turn in the flow of the play: a preceding dynamic scene with the Three Maries, an Angel and Jesus the Gardener is followed by a moment of solitude and meditation during which the audience witnesses not only the confession of Apostle Peter, but also sees the fruits of it in the uplifting words of Christ.
Both Peter and Christ get engaged in the performative speech acts. For Peter the prayer is a real act of penitence performed in such phrases as "Lend me your ear, forgive me my sins, let me see your salvation, I profess I have betrayed you, I am looking for your pardon, cure me." The Apostle publicly confesses his sin and pleads Jesus to cure his conscience that torments him like unlawfully obtained property. He then swears not to move from the rock even for a year until he is finally forgiven. Christ, on the other side, recognizing the prayer as a form of confession, forgives him as he says: "I give you my welcome and pardon."
Apart from being an act of confession, Peter’s prayer has at least two more functions in the play. First of all, it tells the audience about Peter’s betrayal right after Christ’s imprisonment and it thus reveals the source of the temporary conflict between the master and His disciple. By confessing, Peter goes back to the recent events and thus enlarges chronological and spatial boundaries of the play: the audience learns what has happened at the courtyard of the High Priest’s palace a few days ago. A simple monologue on the part of Peter might serve the role of informing the audience about these events, but a more complex monologue form, that of a prayer, has been chosen instead.
Peter’s prayer not only informs the audience and enriches the narrative with new events, it also foreshadows the appearance of Christ who eventually arrives on the stage to give his absolution to Peter. The prayer is thus a dramatic sign that prepares the audience for this crucial meeting of the disciple and his master. Moreover, as in the case of earlier prayer scenes, this one also marks the constant presence of God in the world of the play, and the dramatic effect of the prayer is being heightened when God responds to the prayer.
A Palm Sunday play has been recorded in Poland since the thirteenth century as a liturgical ceremony Processio Pro Dominica Palmarum. One of its vernacular versions is Intermedium pro Dominica Palmarum from the late sixteenth century. Despite the fact that the manuscript in question is incomplete, in-between the lines of this ceremony we can also trace down some features of a popular play similar to those in the previously discussed Story of the Glorious Resurrection. Thus, the Palm Sunday tropes included in the ceremony may be interpreted as extra stage prayer acts. Apart from these, there can be found four short adoration prayers said by Eneus, Bracheus, Cineus and Amatheus, dramatic characters who are representing the entire community of Jerusalem and the assembled audience. Three of these prayers are welcoming prayers, and the last one is a request to Jesus to grant salvation to the innocent children and the Jews, and not to reject their prayers. Also, as in the case of Saint Peter’s prayer in The Story of the Glorious Resurrection, these prayers direct the audience towards the person of Christ, his divine power and the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament.
An interesting remark can be found in the monologue of the Evangelist character, called a Prologus in some other Polish Biblical plays. Thus, after an introduction into the parts of the play and before the performance proper, the Evangelist asks God to make him worthy of performing the events of Christ’s life, he also prays to God in the name of the priests calling them "Your servants", and for the children, probably the members of the schola cantorum. This long prayer is supposed to be uttered in a changed voice or "mutata voce", as the stage direction has it. The reason for the change is probably the fact of the direct address to God. It is part of the introductory prayer that does not yet belong to the Palm Sunday context, but that embraces all the participants of the ceremony. After the passage pronounced in a different tone, the Prologus is supposed to take his cap off, to lower his head and to address the audience in the following manner: "And you Gentlemen, while also listening to us/ and keeping an eye on the whole matter/ may you pay a tribute to God together with us/with a pious sighs." This passage not only shows how voice change marks the shift from a prayer to the address to the audience. It also clearly indicates that the audience was supposed to watch the play and to assume a pious attitude and contemplate the events presented on the stage. This is one of the few references to the possible participation of the audience encountered in vernacular religious plays in Poland.
A late sixteenth-century play Ofiarowanie Izaaka (The Sacrifice of Isaac) comes from the so-called Horodecki codex. It has been suggested that it is related to the Franciscan circle in Cracow. Dramatic pieces were being recorded on the pages of the manuscript until the end of the sixteenth century. The Play of Abraham and Isaac contains three major prayers. All of them aim to indicate the fact that Abraham was blessed in the eyes of God by being able to converse with God freely. Although God the Father is one of the characters in the play, He enters the play only once to demand the sacrifice of Isaac. At all other occasions, it is the task of Abraham’s prayers to signify the constant presence of God on stage. In his first prayer, Abraham adores God and professes eternal faith in a highly elaborate way. All the invocations are made in the second person singular, a number of adjectives is used to describe the generous nature of God and his extreme kindness. In the act of prayer Abraham greets God, promises to follow his commandments, and be worthy of God’s blessing. He addresses God as his Good Father and thus refers to the Father-Son relationship that God has established with him. A moment later, Abraham calls his son Isaac, and in his moralizing speech he transfers the image of the same relationship to his own relationship with the son.
The next prayer of Abraham does not appear until after Isaac’s miraculous delivery from the stake. In his final prayer, Abraham praises the wisdom of God and his omnipotence that he admits he is unable to comprehend. This prayer is directly followed by the closing verses of the Epilogus who summarises the play and provides a moral interpretation of the story. He then concludes with a short prayer asking God to bring everybody to the point of denouncing one’s live just as Abraham did. The Epilogus moves on to offer a prayer that is supposed to accompany one’s submission to God. It is thus a prayer within a prayer with a strong Eucharistic message:
O, inexpressible Body of Christ!
Who is being worshipped in the divine sacrifice.
Have mercy on us, your flock,
Protect it, since it has been acquired through your precious blood.
To sum up the discussion, prayer acts are being employed in various ways in the religious plays of early modern Poland. We may point out to two basic forms of prayer acts that have been introduced in these performances: the first one is extra stage prayer or a liturgical prayer included in the play in order to make the performance more lavish and to bring it closer to a religious act proper. This type of prayer uses liturgical texts such as tropes or sequences and often presents them in the form of a chant. The second type of prayer, the so-called on stage prayer act is a personal address to God and that is usually a genuine composition meant for a specific play.
Most of the prayers discussed assume a traditional second person form of address. In general, prayer is employed to bring in the person of God into the circle of the acting characters. As soon as a prayer is said, be it a second or a third person address to God, God is summoned to the world of the play and stays there until the end as an invisible but crucial character. His influence on the course of the play seems to be even stronger when it is recognized be Him and the blessing or forgiveness is being granted. By responding to the prayers of certain characters, God influences their lives and becomes an active character in the play.
The act of prayer serves sometimes the purpose of introducing a different motivation of the events than common sense ones. Prayers let the audience feel that some other force sets the tone of the play and directs its action. One more important function of the prayer in the play is its taking over the monologue function.
Prayer may also function as a source of information for the audience since it may help to bridge several events in a single episode, as it happens in the case of Saint Peter’s prayer in the The Story of the Glorious Resurrection. Prayers also serve to enumerate the attributes of God and elaborate on selected theological issues. Also, by choosing only certain characters for the role of the praying, religious play directors would probably emphasize their exceptional role in the history of salvation.
Finally, dramatic prayers have power both to move the audiences and to teach them about the power of prayer to get God’s favour and blessing. The specific form of the prayer act, be it an on stage or extra stage prayer, shows how a speech act may cause effects in the speakers themselves and in God - the addressee of the prayers provided all the conditions for the validity of the prayer have been met. Prayer speech acts transform monologues into elevated literary forms that are directly related to the person of God and that were supposed to change the course of dramatic events as well as to contribute to the spiritual growth of the audience members. As can be seen in some of the introductory prayers, the audience is invited to join in or at least to pay heed to the prayers so that they may partake of the blessing supposedly bestowed on them through the means of prayer.