From Jerusalem to Damascus: Bilocal Dramaturgy in Medieval and Shakespearian Conversion Plays

Authors

John W. Velz, University of Texas, Austin

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

In medieval religious drama, the stage is a moral world - stage spaces have moral significance which an audience perceives or apperceives as a complement to the action that takes place in and around them. The classic example is the conventional spatial relation between sinister Hellmouth and dexter Paradise.¹ An analogous stage direction in the Ordo Repraesentationis Adae makes clear how consciously early drama worked for emblematic effects through use of stage space:

Tun ibunt [Chaim et Abel] ad duos magnos lapides qui and hoc erunt parati. Alter ab alero lapide erit remotus, ut cum ap[p]aruerit Figura [i.e., God], sit lapis Abel ad dexreram eius, lapis vero Chaim ad sinistram...²