• Gender and Pilgrimage in The Digby Mary Magdalene
• Jiamiao Chen (bio)

The Digby Mary Magdalene, one of the most theatrically and theologically ambitious plays in the corpus of early English drama, is also one of the most complex in terms of its textual and performance history.¹ Based on linguistic evidence, scholars generally suggest that the play was written in East Anglia in the late fifteenth century, and that the surviving manuscript was produced in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.² Further, the extant text seems to reflect an imagined—and very likely realized—use of medieval locus and platea staging techniques: in this arrangement, the plural loca are scaffolds which, as Robert Weimann writes, “delimit a more or less fixed and focused scenic unit,” while the platea provides “an entirely nonrepresentational and unlocalized setting” where the characters can “[rub] shoulders with the plebeian audience.”³ While the precise number of locations presented by the play remains disputed, scholars generally recognize its grand scale; the play was clearly designed to impress and engage its potential audience.⁴ John Coldewey has suggested that the play was likely performed at the Chelmsford festival in 1562—a suggestion which, if correct, would demonstrate its lasting literary and theatrical appeal.⁵

Whatever its reception by early audiences, the play did not initially impress modern scholars of medieval drama. Incorporating both the biblical narrative and apocryphal legend relating to the life and death of the heroine and containing episodes probably borrowed from mystery plays and morality plays, the play is hybrid, episodic, and sprawling in form and content.⁶ Such qualities proved frustrating for many mid-twentieth century scholars, including Arnold Williams, who lamented, “Characterization, the interplay of character and situation, the purposeful [End Page 460] selection of incident to embody theme, of these it has scarcely any.”⁷ Yet since the mid-twentieth century, scholars have sought to better understand and appreciate the play’s sophisticated design by studying it in its medieval contexts and judging its aesthetic merits on its own terms. For instance, John W. Velz finds “sovereignty” a unifying theme for this play, while Victor I. Scherb suggests that the play is unified “through the repetitive symbolic action of the nuntius figure.”⁸ Although criticizing such attempts to find unifying themes and motifs in the Digby Mary Magdalene, Scott Boehnen also establishes, in effect, a form of unity within the play, specifically by drawing attention to its exploration of different kinds of pilgrimage.⁹ Boehnen’s emphasis on the significance of pilgrimage to the play are important for my purposes here, but it is important to note that, in making his argument, Boehnen risks following in the footsteps of earlier critics who failed to appreciate the gendered dimensions of the protagonist’s experiences, including Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Hall Jr., who argued that the playwright has “translated Mary into Everyman, representing as she did to medieval man the victory of grace, contrition, and penance over human frailty.”¹⁰ In a similar vein, Boehnen claims that, as a pilgrim’s play, the Digby Mary Magdalene “is best considered the play of Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Peter.”¹¹ As we will see, Mary Magdalene’s distinctive connections to medieval women and their devotional experiences are far too understated in such readings.

While it is true that, in the the Digby play, Mary Magdalene defers to Christ and Peter, both the role of Peter and the passion and resurrection of Christ are effectively upstaged by the remarkably dramatic life and death of the titular heroine. Hence Susan Carter observes the “seductive depth of [the Magdalene’s] story” and “the feminist potential of the female saint.”¹² Scholars have explored different aspects of this feminist potential, including Mimi Still Dixon, who has considered the meanings of Mary’s “Femynyte” and “Inward Mythe”; Susannah Milner, who has examined the function of female asceticism in the play; and Joanne Findon, who has traced the literary and cultural hybridity of Mary’s character.¹³ Dixon and Milner, focusing on Mary’s body, interiority, and asceticism, suggest in their own ways that Mary is ultimately empowered by her adherence to...

• 
  The Dig 中的性别和朝圣作者 Mary Magdalene
•  陈佳淼 （bio）

抹大拉的玛丽亚 （Mary Magdalene） 的《狄格比》是早期英国戏剧语料库中最具戏剧和神学雄心的戏剧之一，也是其文本和表演史上最复杂的戏剧之一。¹ 根据语言学证据，学者们普遍认为该剧是 15 世纪末在东英吉利写成的，而现存的手稿是在 16 世纪前 25 年完成的。² 此外，现存的文本似乎反映了对中世纪 locus 和 platea 舞台技术的想象——并且很可能是实现的——使用：在这种安排中，复数位置是脚手架，正如罗伯特·魏曼 （Robert Weimann） 所写的那样，它“或多或少划定了一个固定和集中的场景单元”，而 platea 则提供了“一个完全非具象和未本地化的环境”，人物可以在其中“与平民观众 [擦肩] ”。³ 虽然该剧所呈现的地点的确切数量仍存在争议，但学者们普遍承认其宏大的规模;该剧显然是为了给潜在观众留下深刻印象并吸引他们。⁴ 约翰·科尔德威 （John Coldewey） 认为该剧很可能在 1562 年的切姆斯福德音乐节上演出——如果这个说法是正确的，将证明其持久的文学和戏剧吸引力。⁵

无论早期观众如何接受该剧，该剧最初并没有给现代中世纪戏剧学者留下深刻印象。该剧融合了与女主人公生死有关的圣经叙事和杜撰传说，并包含可能借鉴自悬疑剧和道德剧的情节，该剧是混合的、情节性的，并且在形式和内容上都很庞大。^“6 这些品质让许多 20 世纪中叶的学者感到沮丧，包括阿诺德·威廉姆斯，他感叹道：”人物塑造、人物和情境的相互作用、有目的地 [完第 460 页] 选择事件来体现主题，在这些方面几乎没有。⁷ 然而，自 20 世纪中叶以来，学者们通过在中世纪背景下研究它并根据其自身的审美价值来更好地理解和欣赏该剧的复杂设计。例如，约翰·维尔茨 （John W. Velz） 发现“主权”是这部剧的统一主题，而维克多·谢尔布 （Victor I. Scherb） 则认为该剧是“通过修女形象的重复象征性动作”统一的。⁸ 虽然斯科特·博能 （Scott Boehnen） 批评了这种在《狄格比·抹大拉的玛丽亚》中寻找统一主题和主题的尝试，但实际上也在剧中建立了一种统一形式，特别是通过引起人们对不同类型朝圣之旅的探索的关注。⁹ Boehnen 强调朝圣对戏剧的重要性对于我在这里的目的很重要，但重要的是要注意，在提出他的论点时，Boehnen 冒着追随早期评论家的脚步的风险，这些评论家未能欣赏主人公经历的性别维度，包括 Donald C. Baker、John L. Murphy 和 Louis B. Hall Jr。“，他认为剧作家”将玛丽翻译成每个人，就像她对中世纪人所做的那样，代表了恩典、忏悔和忏悔战胜人类弱点的胜利。¹⁰ 同样，博能声称，作为朝圣者的戏剧，《狄格比抹大拉的玛丽亚》“最好被认为是圣玛丽·抹大拉和圣彼得的戏剧”。¹¹ 正如我们将看到的，抹大拉的马利亚与中世纪妇女的独特联系以及她们的灵修经历在这样的阅读中太过低调。

虽然在迪格比的戏剧中，抹大拉的马利亚确实服从了基督和彼得，但彼得的角色以及基督的受难和复活都被名义上女主人公极具戏剧性的生与死有效地抢了风头。因此，苏珊·卡特观察到“[抹大拉]故事的诱人深度”和“女性圣人的女权主义潜力”。¹² 学者们探讨了这种女权主义潜力的不同方面，包括 Mimi Still Dixon，她考虑了玛丽的“Femynyte”和“Inward Mythe”的含义;苏珊娜·米尔纳（Susannah Milner），她研究了剧中女性禁欲主义的功能;以及乔安妮·芬登 （Joanne Findon），她追踪了玛丽性格的文学和文化混合性。¹³ 狄克逊和米尔纳专注于玛丽的身体、内在性和禁欲主义，以他们自己的方式暗示，玛丽最终是通过她对......