To browse Academia. The chapter delves into "The Play of the Bower," a prominent medieval theatrical piece highlighting local Arras culture through its characters and plots, including recognized citizens and societal dynamics.
Additionally, it offers crucial insights into medieval performance practices, audience reception, and personal relationships entwined with theatrical narratives.
This article was indeed provocative for our discipline in that it called into question the established canon of medieval theatre and our approaches to it. In the context of arguing that many play scripts 'may well be preserved in devotional books of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries', Symes noted that in Arras MS , this narrative text was 'fully rubricated, as if for performance'. She further speculated: Maybe it was conceived as a play in the first place: the narrator, called Actor in the rubrics, plays multiple roles in this representation of Christ's ministry, death, and Resurrection torturer, disciple, and thief , and in these different guises interacts with other characters, human and divine.
Symes then concluded her speculation with a challenge-or an invitation: 'Some of those missing plays may yet appear, if we learn to read the record with new eyes.
This study expands upon a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, which is currently being revised for publication: "A Medieval Stage: Theatre and the Culture of Performance in Thirteenth-Century Arras".
