The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church.

By Dunbar Ogden. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2002; pp. 251. $39.50 cloth.

Dunbar Ogden's The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church is, first and foremost, an exploration of medieval dramaturgy. Ogden's evocative descriptions of medieval liturgical dramatizations are solidly grounded in the vocabulary of modern theatrical realism. Visitatio Sepulchri ceremonies, for example, are "performances" with "all of the elements of theatrical production," the Quem quaeritis in the Winchester Troper is a "play." Ogden seeks those qualities in medieval texts, music, rubrics, and architecture that resonate with traditional Western stage representation: individualized characterization, gestures drawn from everyday life, realistic props and costumes, vocal qualities expressive of human emotion. "Throughout this study of staging," the author writes, "we are searching through original records of liturgical observance to discover rare bits of evidence of the drama: the glimmering of what we might call play instead of rite, ludus instead of ordo or officium, Spiel instead of Feier, jeu instead of rituel" (p. 179).

Numerous recent scholarly efforts have shown the problems inherent in applying post-Renaissance concepts of drama and theatricality to medieval texts and music. Though some critical readers might find Ogden's approach to be nostalgic, even Romantic, in its quest for glimmers of the modern in the medieval, The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church provides an essential resource for directors and performers attempting to create emotionally effective reconstructions of medieval religious dramas and ceremonies. Ogden's study does not set out to analyze his sources (drawn largely from Karl Young and Walter Lippardt as well as manuscripts), reassess the historiography that informs his interpretations, or engage critical material on gender, violence, memory, ritual, or medieval representational practices. His purpose is to explore medieval texts and music traditionally known as "liturgical drama" for their aesthetic value as stage pieces. This study offers meticulous comparisons of familiar texts such as the Peregrinus, Officium Stellae, Ordo Prophetarum and Visitatio Sepulchri, revealing a wide range of interpretive possibilities.

The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church covers six centuries of English and Continental church dramas. Prof. Ogden does not tie liturgical dramatization to liturgical practice or theology, or delve into historical conditions that might have informed variations in representational practice. He is deeply invested in the relationship between performance rubrics and space, based on finely honed interpretations of the internal evidence for performance in liturgical texts, music, and architecture. The texts chosen for detailed description in Chapter Three are those which can be assigned to specific churches and cathedrals. Ogden renders his texts in three dimensions by matching references to altars, tombs, chapels, movement, and other features to their original physical spaces (p. 41).

The dramaturgical strategy does often lead to observations of historical change. Ogden suggests, for example, that performances of the Visitatio ceremony as documented in the English Regularis Concordia took place in The Old Minster of Winchester and in Christ Church, Canterbury; the difference in architecture reflects "a transition at the birth of ecclesiastical drama from a processional liturgy ... to a liturgy celebrated within a single church building" (p. 26, 27). Likewise, Ogden's presentation of internal evidence indicates how dramatic action could take place anywhere in a given church: choir, organ loft, crypt, nave, in front of the facade. He concludes that "the [historical] process from this kind of theatre to that of the Renaissance is largely a process of confinement, of separation between actor and audience, of formal physical restrictions on distinct playing space versus distinct viewing space" (p. 40). Ogden's focus on theatrical performance does not require elaboration on conclusions such as these, or speculation on issues of the alterity of medieval drama raised by Hans Robert Jauss and Rainer Warning in the late 1970's. These historical conclusions do, however, very effectively support Ogden's underlying claim (most evident in Chapter Six, The Music) that despite radical differences in representational practices between modernity and the Middle Ages, hints of emotional realism bind medieval religious presentations to modern theatre.

Throughout The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church, floor plan diagrams, sketches and photographs of church interiors, photographs of iconography, drawings of liturgical garments, transcripts of musical passages, as well as lengthy reproductions of the texts themselves provide a reader with abundant visual resources with which to mentally reconstruct a church drama as a medieval Gesamtkunstwerk (p. 175). Pictorial evidence such as Hartker's Liber responsalis, the Benedictional of Bishop Ethelwold, and twelfth-century replicas of the Holy Sepulchre help the author explore dramaturgical questions, such as "what did the Sepulchre look like," "where was it positioned in the church," and "where were the actors positioned" (pp. 30-31, 33). Likewise, glossaries of medieval terms for "set pieces" (pp. 120-121) and vocal qualities (pp. 156-58), provide useful references for interpreting texts as effective productions.

Ogden's focus on physical movement and gesture as bodily expressions of emotion in Chapter Three and on costume as "a formal mode of character portrayal" in Chapter Four is clearly written with an eye to modern reproductions. Along the way, Ogden also lays foundations for historical work that extends beyond production dramaturgy. Chapter Five, Acting, for example, lays out differences between texts written to be performed by women and those written for men. The differences Ogden notes invite intriguing questions outside the scope of this study: Why were women's texts written in the vernacular and with indications of prompting? How and why did the texts for women's performances allow for a greater expression of emotion in language and gesture? What do thirteenth-century purification rituals for women suggest about the relationship between Christian worship and dramatic representation in convents? How did the invention of "fresh musical composition, a new ceremonial moment, a unique gestural pattern" around the figure of Mary Magdalen in the twelfth century challenge conventional images of sacred women?

The search for theatrical verisimilitude in The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church remains carefully, if not critically, balanced between religious ceremony on one side and theatre as a secular art form on the other. In his chapter on music, Ogden is very aware (citing Susan Rankin and John Stevens in particular) that plainsong was not constructed as a mirror to dramatic characterization. Still, he seeks those conjunctions between words, melodies, instrumentations, and modes in which "a spark of a ludus contrasts with the generally cool temper of an ordo or officium" (p. 179). As in his analysis of the multiple uses of architectural space, Ogden's search through chant notation reveals wide variation in relationships between language, movement, and musical settings. The dramatic effects, following Ogden, are conditioned by the degree of ceremony or theatricality indicated in the text (p. 200). Chapter Six also opens up possibilities for much needed work on the interaction between physicality and music in liturgical practice in light of studies by Christopher Page, Margot Fassler, Nancy Van Deusen, Timothy McGee, Ruth Steiner, Ulrike Weithaus, and Constant Mews, as well as examination of musical treatises in relation to dramatic performance.

As a dramaturgical manual informed by the author's many stagings of medieval liturgical plays, The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church does not problematize traditional arrangements of information or ideas about medieval theatricality. In the tradition of Clifford Davidson, David Bevington, Audrey Ekdahl Davidson, and Peter Meredith, Ogden's study sets out a clear, stunningly detailed, and immensely practical guide for understanding medieval drama as theatrical performance in modern church settings. While the application of modern terminology to medieval practices might trouble some historians, Ogden's clear prose identifies fine gradations between modern theatre and medieval representation, and between Christian ritual and theatrical performance that serve recreations of the texts and their music. His sensitivity to performance is everywhere evident, as is his admirably thorough knowledge of his sources. The Staging of Drama in the Medieval Church is an elegant and readable book, supplemented beautifully with well-chosen visual images, which offers a complete comparative study of new and familiar medieval liturgical dramas. As such, Dunbar Ogden's study has numerous immediate applications in contemporary dramaturgy and pedagogy, and will be a valuable resource for historians as well as practitioners for decades to come.

Donnalee Dox

Texas A&M University