Miracles and other signs of holiness.
Political references.
Within the reach of the plays that have been studied for this paper, the Cornish plays stand out in their apparent interest in contemporary politics. While Mary Magdalen and Gwénolé are placed strictly in past times, this is not altogether the case in the Cornish plays. The most striking example of this political engagement is found in the Arthurian part of Beunans Ke, where the traitor Mordred is bestowing a ‘blue and murrey’ (blow ha more[8]) livery on one of his faithful servants. He explains that this is the ‘livery of Ghent’. This is a reference to John of Gaunt (1340-99), duke of Lancaster. The editor explains that in the ‘war of the Roses’ the houses of Lancaster and York fought each other for the kingship of England. In the end, Henry Tudor from the house of Lancaster married Elizabeth of York and became the first Tudor king. In the light of this, we may appreciate the interest of the character of King Teudar that features in both Beunans Meriasek and in Beunans Ke. In both plays, he is a pagan king that persecutes the saint-hero. His name would be pronounced ‘King Tudor’ in Cornish.
We cannot be sure what the meaning of the figure of King Teudar was in Beunans Meriasek, as the author of this play very probably 'borrowed' the Teudar motive from Beunans Ke. The older, Breton, Lives of Meriasek all place his life in its entirety in Brittany. G.H. Doble suggested already in 1964[9] that the Cornish parts of Beunans Meriasek could very well be borrowed from another play, to ground Meriasek in Cornwall too, so that the people could better relate to his story. The editors of Beunans Ke suggest that the author of BM could have borrowed from BK[10], which the present author thinks is very probable. Both plays, as well as the Cornish Ordinalia plays, were probably written in the same institution, Glasney College in Penryn[11], which makes a link between Beunans Ke and Beunans Meriasek even more likely.
It is curious that, while these plays have been written at Glasney, they contain so many anti-Tudor sentiments, for it was the provost of Glasney College that was appointed as a collector of the special taxes the King levied to finance his war with the Scots, the taxes that incited the people of Cornwall to rise against the King and march to London[12]. So these anti-royalist plays were written in a royalist institution. By a subversive author maybe? We don’t know.
There is also another side to the Teudar character. He also features in Albert Le Grand’s (Breton) Life of Meriasek[13], as ‘the wicked king Theodoric’. This Theodoric is an historical character: E.M.R. Ditmas writes that he was a fifth-century Cornish king or ‘tyrannus’, who persecuted the Irish ‘saints’ in his lands. There are may legends about this Teudar in the region around Truro in Cornwall[14]. Apparently the legends about this old ‘tyrant’ have mixed with contemporary political sentiments in Beunans Ke.
Non-Christians.
Concerning Non-Christians, or heathens, Teudar is once more the first person to look at. In Beunans Meriasek he is a worshipper of ‘Mahound’ or Mohamed. In Mary Magdalen, the King of Marcyll is portrayed as a Saracen too, and an entire scene is devoted to a ‘Mass’ of Mahound, with a Lesson and sacrifices[15]. In Beunans Meriasek a similar scene features in the Interlude of the woman’s son, where an unnamed tyrant and his men perform a sacrificing ritual for Mahound, in which Jove is also honoured[16]. In both plays these scenes have a distinct humorous character, and it is probable that one of the plays influenced the other.
Teudar is a pagan in Beunans Ke, too, but one less inclined to worship Mahound than Jove. When Ke tries to explain the mystery of the Trinity to him, he answers that there is indeed a divine trinity, that consists of Jove, Beryth and Astrot, the gods he refers most often to throughout the play[17]. Mahound is mentioned, as would be expected: in British medieval theatre Mohammedanism is the cliché form of paganism, and indeed Teudar swears ‘ by Mahound’s precious blood’ (line 258). It is interesting, however, that in this play Islam is not the most-used example of non-Christian religion, but that this ‘honour’ goes to pre-Christian cults.
Mordred, who is definitely an evil guy, is a Christian, although his predilection for st. Thomas (the unbeliever?) in line 3191 ‘by saint Thomas whom I love!’ might be a bit dubious, if it is not a reference to saint Thomas the martyr of Canterbury.
In Gwénolé, the family of the saint has to flee Britain because of raiding pagan Saxons. These Saxons aren’t called ‘heathens’ in the text, the play just tells about their cruel, murderous nature[18]. Of course it is known today that these raiders were indeed pagans, but this is not insisted upon: Guezenoc, Gwénolé’s brother, calls them ‘dyfeyz’ (faithless, line 301) but that is all. Paganism as a whole, and Mohammedanism in particular seems to be less of a topic in Gwénolé as it is in the British plays.
Miracles and other signs of holiness.
All the plays studied feature miracles to some extent. In Beunans Meriasek, Meriasek starts immediately after his consecration to perform miracles, when a blind man and a cripple ask him to be cured[19]. These are just the first examples of the many illnesses he cures during the play. When he wants to build his hermitage near a chapel in Cornwall he prays to find water, and immediately a well springs up[20]. When back in Brittany, he tames a wolf that crosses his path and sends the beast away before the eyes of an astonished peasant[21]. Later during the play, the count of Rohan comes to his hermitage to ask Meriasek’s help against bands of robbers that are pestering the countryside. Meriasek tells the count the country will be freed of them, and immediately the wood in which the robbers are hiding starts to burn. They all burn to death, except for four of them that call on Saint Meriasek in repentance[22]. Miracles play a part in the scenes concerning saint Silvester and in the Interlude of the Woman’s Son as well.
In Beunans Ke, Ke performs quite some miracles. His very first act in the play is to cross the sea from a place called Colan, which might have been in Wales[23], to Cornwall on a slab of stone[24]. Once arrived in Cornwall, he starts an argument with Teudar and gets imprisoned by him: Teudar tries to bread the saint by denying him food and light, and by letting him stay in a dirty prison. But the hardships have no effect on Ke: the servant of the jailor reports a dazzling light and a sweet fragrance around him, while he is praying all the time. Even torture has no effect on him. When Teudar sets the saint free at last, the first thing he does is creating a spring by praying and healing a leper with its water forthwith. The leper gives the spring and the land surrounding it to Ke in gratitude (apparently we are dealing with a rich leper here), and the next scene starts with Ke ploughing the land with a plough pulled by wild stags. Teudar, seeing that his mistreating of Ke has no effect, tries to win his friendship instead, and promises Ke a favour. Ke asks to be given all the land he is able to enclose in the time Teudar is taking a bath. Teudar agrees, and orders his wise-woman to prepare a bath to him. When he wants to get out of it after a while, he finds he is stuck in the tub and can't move. He blames the wise-woman, saying that she cursed him, but she denies any responsibility. In the meantime, Ke had enclosed a very large parcel of land. When Teudar hears this, he curses Jovyn, his god.
Gwénolé is not so much of a miracle performer as his Cornish colleagues: there are only two ‘real’ miracles in the play: the punishment of the thieves that try to steal corn from his abbey[25], and the return from the death of the mother of Riou, one of Gwénolé’s monks[26]. In this last story there is no doubt Gwénolé is really performing a miracle: when he hears his mother is ill and dying, Riou asks permission from his abbot Gwénolé to leave and visit her. The saint gives him, along with his permission, a bottle of holy water. When Riou arrives at his mother’s house, she is dead, but he resurrects her with the holy water Gwénolé has given to him, and they both give praise an thanks to the saint.
The other miracle is less easy to ascribe to the intercession of the saint: when thieves are trying to steal the corn of the abbey, an angel wakes Gwénolé and tells him to go to the chapel with his monks, to pray for the conversion of the thieves. Gwénolé obeys, whereupon the thieves hear him and his congregation moving, and want to flee. But at the same moment their bags of booty become to heavy on their backs, they can’t move anymore, and they become blind.
Surely this is a miracle, but can we ascribe it to Gwénolé in the same way as we may ascribe Meriasek’s miracles to Meriasek, and Ke’s to Ke? Gwénolé’s role in the performance of this miracle is much more passive as the role of the other saint, who actively ask God to heal the ill, for example, or to find water. Gwénolé is just woken up by an angel to go and pray, and God provides for the rest. Indeed, Gwénolé’s role is more that of the prophet, the messenger of God: he communicates with angels and with Mary, or rather, they choose to communicate with him, and in the story of the city of Ys he is also send on a mission to tell the citizens of Ys what their fate will be if they will not change their lives for the better, like the biblical prophets foretelling misery if the people will not change their evil ways.
Mary Magdalen, as a saint, comes closer in behaviour to Gwénolé than to the both Cornish saints. In the Digby play, she performs only two miracles, like Gwénolé: the first is the pregnancy of the Queen of Marcyll[27]. This pagan queen wanted a child for a long time already, but didn’t conceive. When she decides to help Mary Magdalen and give her food and clothes, Mary tells her she is pregnant, and at the same time she feels the child stirring in her womb. When she feels this, both queen and king convert. The other miracle is performed from quite a distance: as the king and queen of Marcyll are sailing to the Holy Land, the queen dies on sea in childbirth. He has to leave her and his newborn a child on a rock in the sea, and after a prayer to Mary Magdalen he proceeds further on his own. But when he comes back from his voyage, he finds his wife and child alive on the rock, and his wife tells him that Mary Magdalen has guided her through the Holy Land, that she was with him all the time, and baptised together with him, in spirit[28].
Where Beunans Ke and Beunans Meriasek share the many miracles that both saints perform, do Gwénolé and Mary Magdalen, less ‘miraculous’ saints in these plays at least, share another feature: they both are sent from their homeland by a divine messenger, Gwénolé as a child, Mary Magdalen as an adult person, to preach Christianity to unbelievers. They are both more ‘prophet’ -like saints than miracle performers.
Meriasek and Gwénolé share, on the other hand, their being recognised as a saint by their surroundings from a very young age on already: Meriasek is privileged by his schoolmaster almost as soon as he enters the school, because the schoolmaster recognises him as a saint in his denial of food in favour of prayer[29]. Gwénolé is ‘discovered’ by his uncle, king Gradlon of Cornouaille, because of his religious discourse. The king immediately offers land to the saint to build his abbey[30]. We don’t know whether Ke had such a saintly childhood as well, as the first few pages of this play are missing. Ke is, on the other hand, the only saint who is tortured in the plays studied. This is remarkable, because normally torture is a stock feature of saints’ lives and thus of saint plays.
Comical elements.
The use of humour is one of the most noteworthy aspects of Beunans Meriasek. The humorous parts in the script, however, are all confined to the lesser characters, or ‘sidekicks’.
The first humorous character we encounter is the schoolmaster[31]: surely a parody of a type that was often encountered in real life, the schoolmaster in more interested in his gages than in the education of his pupils. Apart from that, he is very fond of wine and makes no secret of this. In fact, he tells the public that when he is drunk he speaks Latin, and no other language. A proud, alcoholic and money-loving grammar teacher: even nowadays we can smile because of this hyperbolic character.
In the Sylvester part of the play[32] we encounter the ‘Doctor’ and his apprentice, Jenkin. The doctor makes it no secret that he is fake, but, ‘one has to live’, As for Jenkin, he doubtlessly entertained the public with his side remarks that are obscene (‘you would know what to do when you were between a woman’s thighs’) and scatological (in his complaining about the smell of Constantine’s urine) in character. After the scene with the ‘Doctor’, Constantine’s torturers take it one step further with their bawdy remarks on ‘making new babies’ as they are set out to take away the existing ones to be slaughtered for the emperor. All these scenes are played on the first day of the play. In the script of the second day really humorous characters are lacking, but then the public has an interlude and the slaying of a dragon (by saint Silvester) to entertain them.
Teudar is the main comical character in Beunans Ke. This is a big difference with Beunans Meriasek, where the small characters fulfil the comical function: Teudar is, apart from Ke himself, the most important character of the non-Arthurian part of the play. In his discussion on Christian dogma with Ke[33], he fails to understand what Ke is really talking about, and applies Ke’s teachings about the Trinity to his own Gods Jovyn, Beryth and Astrot. The self-assurance of his heretical speech, that to the medieval public must have sounded very stupid, for ‘of course’ there is only one Trinity, must have made it comical to this same public. The way he talks about God and Christ, an raf rybot (‘the worthless ribald’, l.301) must have shocked the public, but also have provoked some giggling.
Just afterwards, the jailor’s servant is summoned to King Teudar. He is sleeping and gets a scolding by his master, and arrives too late at Teudar’s court. Where he declares without a trace of shame that he wouldn’t be late but for his master, who wouldn’t hasten enough![34] Like the scene discussed above, the theme of the ignorant Teudar is an example of dramatic irony, with the public knowing what really happened while Teudar doesn’t, applied for a comical effect. Teudar believes the servant, for when the jailor himself arrives too late at Teudars court, a bit further on in the play, Teudar threatens that his own servant will hang him if he will ever be seen in the king’s presence again. The scene with Teudar and the wise-woman displays a relatively subtle humour, with Teudar being sarcastic, insulting the woman, and telling the public he would like to bed her without her noticing it. Again, we are dealing with dramatic irony, a style figure the author apparently liked, and that gives the play a certain subtlety in its humour the other plays are lacking. As in the other plays, the largest part of the humour used consists of hyperboles and obscenities, but the dramatic irony lifts the play to a bit higher plane, giving the public the feeling to actively participate in the play, and to shake their heads because of the king’s stupidity, or that of the poor Oubra (the wise-woman), who is being played with while she is there to hear it, but fails to understand.
The second part of the play is less humorous, but to compensate it deals with Arthurian material, a subject that would be sure to please the public.
Mary Magdalen is not as funny a play as its Cornish counterparts. The greater part of it is quite serious, although the scene in which the King and Queen of Marcyll want to offer a sacrifice to Mahound[35] is definitely humorous: the star of the scene is the priest’s boy, declaring in the first part of the scene in lengthy text that the priest is so fat a horse couldn’t even carry him anymore. This might be a scene parodying Christian priests with a great love for food, a hypothesis that is strengthened by next scene: the ‘lectio Mahoundis’, in which the boy reads in the ‘service’ of a ‘holy book’, in Latin of course. This ‘Latin’ is entirely made up, and what can be understood of it is that it consists mainly of Latinised English words of a rather low register. Another glint of humour is provided by the sailors that assist in the first travel over sea that feature in the play. In the first ‘sea scene’, the ‘boy’ of the ship won’t do his work, because he is ill, or so he says: only a ‘fair damsel’ can save him. On which his master agrees to bring a girl to his bed[36]. This might be an example of obscene humour; on the other hand, just after this promise of the master a ‘fair damsel’ does access the boat, the damsel in question being Mary Magdalene, and although she doesn’t visit the boy’s bad, no more is heard of his illness.
Gwenole is the least humorous of the plays studied. The only part of the play that might be seen as ‘humorous’ at all is Gwenole’s conversation with the citizens of Ys: this part of the play is full of obscenities and innuendo’s[37], but the gross words and low jokes might also be seen as just an example of the moral debasement of the people of Ys, and not be meant to be funny at all.
On the whole, the Cornish plays, and especially Beunans Ke stand out in their humour, their lightness and their parodies of well-known characters from real life. To me, Beunans Ke takes this further than Beunans Meriasek in its playful use of dramatic irony, although it must be said that the character of the schoolmaster in Beunans Meriasek is particularly skilfully drawn, and surely must have provoked laughter by the public. Mary Magdalen displays this same kind of parodic, light humour in one scene, the service to Mahound. It is interesting that it is exact in this scene that Mary Magdalen displays a humour akin to the humour in the Cornish plays, for Beunans Meriasek also has a ‘Mohammedanist’ scene in the Interlude of the Woman’s Son, as I had indicated above in the paragraph on non-Christians. Seen the fact that Mary Magdalen nowhere else in the play is so much alike in style to Beunans Meriasek as in the scene, it seems probable that it is Beunans Meriasek that influenced Mary Magdalen, and not the other way around…on the other hand, it seems more likely that English plays would be read in Cornwall, and adapted into Cornish, maybe, than that English readers would be able to read plays in Cornish. In either case, there seems to be a connection between these two plays.
Intertwining storylines.
The coming together of multiple storylines at a fairly late point in a play seems to be another speciality of the Cornish plays, besides humour and political references. Where Mary Magdalen and Gwenole deal with the adventures of one hero, and follow a more or less straightforward storyline, Beunans Meriasek switches between the stories of Sylvester and Meriasek himself, before the two stories finally come together. In the beginning, the alteration between the stories of Meriasek and Sylvester leaves the reader a bit bemused: are the Sylvester parts just an interlude, meant to catch the attention of the public once more, or are they shown because there are parallels between the lives of both saints? After all, both saints are being persecuted, living in a country ruled by a pagan, and both enter in an argument with this pagan ruler. Both of them are high ecclesiastics as well: Sylvester is a pope, Meriasek becomes a bishop. And this is where the two parts of the play come together: when the noblemen of Brittany want to consecrate Meriasek as a bishop, they send a messenger to pope Sylvester. Now the Sylvester figure makes appearance in the Meriasek part of the play! He does, of course, fully support the proposal of the Britons to consecrate Meriasek, and immediately prepares the bulls needed[38]. This is all of Sylvester’s role in the Meriasek part of Beunans Meriasek, but it is crucial, as it is the link that intertwines both storylines, and makes fourth-century Sylvester a contemporary of sixth-century Meriasek. The motivation for this may have been the earlier mentioned parallels between their lives.
In Beunans Ke, the two different storylines in the script, the life of Ke and the following Arthurian part, probably have been intertwined in the same way. We can’t be sure of this, because the last part of this play is missing. But in Albert Le Grand’s Life of St. Ke[39], Ke comes back from Brittany to Cornwall when his land is in crisis: Mordred has usurped King Arthur’s throne and married his wife Guinevere, and has allied himself with duke Chelderic (‘Chellery’ in Bewnans Ke), just as in the play. This pagan alliance forms a threat to Christendom, and Ke and six other bishops are send to negotiate with Mordred. According to the Life, the negotiations fail, but Guinevere is persuaded to retreat herself in a nunnery, thus saving her soul. As the editors of Bewnans Ke remark[40], the two missing folios at the end of the play may very well have contained Ke’s intervention in the politics of his day and age, and thus a link between the two parts of the play, the saint’s Life and the Arthurian romance. Then we have here another trait shared between Beunans Ke and Beunans Meriasek, or rather another trait that the author of Beunans Meriasek probably has borrowed from the earlier Beunans Ke: the interlacing of apparently separate storylines.
Metrics.
Metrically, Beunans Meriasek follows the same rules as Beunans Ke and the other surviving Cornish plays. But before we delve into this, let’s have a short look at the metrical properties of the other two plays, Mary Magdalen and Saint Gwénolé.
The life of saint Gwenole is written in rhyming lines of the type AB CD EF GH.... Most of these lines are eight syllables each, although there are also verses of twelve syllables in each line. This is the same pattern as we encounter in other Middle Breton saint plays: in Buhez Santez Nonn[41] the normal amount of syllables is eight for a line, although there are also verses (spoken by the more ‘important’ characters, like Saint Gildas and Saint Paulinus) that have ten syllables. In Buhez Santez Genovefa a Vrabant[42] virtually all lines count twelve syllables. The basic rhyme scheme of all these plays is identical.
Mary Magdalen is a bit more complicated than this. The play makes use of different kinds of stanzas, depending on the character speaking, and the kind of speech he is declaiming. For example: ‘evil’ personages, like devils, tend to speak more often in bob-and-wheel stanzas and alliterations, just as boasting speeches contain many alliterating syllables[43]. The way of versification is dependent on the content of the text.
How does this work in the Cornish plays? The do not use the same versification as system as the Breton play nor Mary Magdalen: they have their own system of four-syllable and seven-syllable lines, that is more or less the same Beunans Ke and Beunans Meriasek, as well as in other Cornish plays. Most lines are seven-syllabic, but in many stanzas these seven-syllable lines are interrupted by one or two 4-syllable lines. A stanza typically consists of six or eight lines. A type of stanza that occurs often is the bob-and-wheel-like 7a/7b/7a/7b/4c/7d/7d/7c, in which the number stands for the amount of syllables in each line and the letters show the rhyme scheme. The following example actually consists of the very first lines of the play, introducing king Konan:
(ll. 1-8) Pater Meriadocus My yw gelwys Dug Breten ha sevys a woes ryal, ha war an wlaskor chyften nessa dhe'n myghtern ughel, Kyng Konani. A'y linyeth pur wir yth ov, gwarthevyas war wyls ha dov, Doutys yn mysk arlydhi[44].
This type of phrase is pronounced at least once by most characters in the script: ‘good guys’ (like Meriasek) and ‘bad guys’ (like Teudar) alike. So this bob-and-wheel-like type of stanza isn’t restricted to evildoers or lesser characters, like the bob-and-wheels in Mary Magdalen. This same stanza type (ababcddc) with only seven-syllable lines, that is to say, without the ‘bob’, also occurs in Beunans Meriasek, and is used for different types of character. There doesn’t seem to be a general rule applying certain types of stanzas to certain characters, and the longer and shorter lines seem to serve to other purposes that metric, that is to say esthetic ones.
The most striking type of stanza occurring in Beunans Meriasek is made up of three lines of seven syllables each, of which the first and the second line rhyme, and the third seems to stand on its own. This type of stanza also form the base of the Welsh englyn, a very current type of stanza in Middle Welsh poetry. Here follow some examples from the scene in which Constantine consults the doctor:
(ll 1413-1415) Secundus nuntius:
Klav diberthys ev yw sur ny welis yn bys nameur denvydh dell ywa dyghtyes. (ll. 1440-1442) Doctor: Mynnav gweles agas dowr hag y'n eur na an emp'our a'n jevydh gorthyp y’n kas (ll. 1443-1445) Justus My a brederis henna. Y urin otta omma: towl yn dha weder glas.
In the last two examples, that follow immediately upon each other, we see that the ‘loose’ last lines of each stanza do actually rhyme with each other. When a three-lined stanza answers another three-lined stanza, this seems to be always the case, but this is not so when a three-lined stanza follows another type of verse. For example:
(ll. 891-902) Tevdarus Ny dheu les a'gan argya, kyn fen ni omma vythkweyth. ] Meryasek, Krist denagh e ha dha gothman my a vydh may fo gwelys. Epskop wordhi my a'th hwra, hyf rewler* oll a'n pow ma. Namoy my ny dhesirya' ma's gordhya Mahum pup-prys. Meriadocus Yma gwell fordh es honna: gwra dhejy Krist ker gordhya, ken maner kellys os sur.These three-line stanzas do look very much like the welsh englyn milwr, the ‘soldier’s englyn’, which also is made up of three lines of seven syllables. But in the englyn, all lines have to rhyme with each other, be it a full syllable-rhyme or proest, which is a kind of half-rhyme[45]. In either case, the englyn milwr is aaa, where the three-line stanzas in Beunans Meriasek are aab. But the englynion, as well as most of the other poetic forms that are dealt with in this book, belong to the classical era of welsh poetry, that started in the old Welsh period (mid 8th- mid 12th century) and had its heyday in the Middle Welsh period (mid-12th – end of the 14th century. Beunans Meriasek is written later than the ‘classical’ Middle Welsh poetry, but coincides better with the later poetry of the cywyddwyr. Manuscripts containing cywydd poetry date from the beginning of the fifteenth until the seventeenth century. The most celebrated cywydd poet was Dafydd ab Gwilym[46]. And the cywyddwyr, as opposed to older poets, made extensive use of metres consisting both of lines of seven and lines of four syllables. The most-used type of cywydd was the cywydd deuar hirion, that was built up of lines ending in a stressed syllable rhyming with lines ending with a unstressed syllable[47]. This metre was influenced by an older metre, called traetbodl, that also was made up of seven-syllable lines but of which the metrical rules were less strict. Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the first cywyddwyr, used this rhythm quite often[48], and many lines in Beunans Meriasek would fall into this class too, although no particular attention seems to be paid to stress. Another cywydd metre is the cywydd deuair fyrion, which is the shorter form of cywydd deuair hirion, consisting of lines of four syllables. But this metre was almost never used in Welsh in this time: according to Morris-Jones, this could have been because it is very difficult to apply cynghanedd (a system of consonantal rhyme) in a verse form that uses only four syllables a line[49]. Probably it was a metre that was used more often before cynghanedd was fully introduced in Welsh poetry, that is to say, before the thirteenth century. A problem in linking these metres to Beunans Meriasek is that these metres normally follow an aa bb cc… rhyme scheme, where the rhyme scheme in Beunans Meriasek (and the other Cornish plays that are written in the same metre(s)) follow a more free, or variable rhyme scheme. But then, the Welsh poems did not often exceed the 60 lines, where the Cornish plays are considerably longer. Longer narrative poetry calls for a more flexible metre, or a combination of different metres, or it would ask for a very skilled poet that would be difficult to find. Given the facts that cywydd poetry and the Cornish theatre bloomed in approximately the same age, the Wales and Cornwall are very close to each other geographically, and were so linguistically and culturally, that they share metres that are very similar, and that some stanzas resemble very closely the classical englynion, it is probable that either Cornish theatre was metrically inspired by contemporary Welsh poetry, or that both literary cultures shared a common ground on which the developed similar poetic forms. In the first case, the Cornish would have adapted and changed the metres to be used for their own ends, that differed from those of the Welsh, who didn’t write plays but considerably shorter poems, mostly to be performed in the presence of their patrons. This may explain the differences that exist between the two traditions. In the second case, Cornish and Welsh would have shared a common poetic tradition that made use of lines of verse containing either four or seven syllables, and they would both have developed this tradition in a slightly different way. This would account for the lack of cynhanedd in the Cornish plays: the common tradition would go back to before the time cynhanedd was introduced. On the other hand, this could also be explained by the differences between the creation of relatively short poems and theatre plays, as discussed above. We cannot be sure about this.Putting it all together.
I have compared Beunans Meriasek with other plays that stem from different traditions: it’s own, Cornish one in the form of Beunans Ke, the Breton tradition, represented by Gwénolé, and the English saint plays, here represented by Mary Magdalen. The both Cornish plays are very close to each other: they share the same metre, that is used in all extant Middle Cornish plays, and they also share some themes, like the character of King Teudar. We have seen that very probably, this theme was ‘borrowed’ by the author of Beunans Meriasek from Beunans Ke. The both worked in the same institution, Glasney College in Penryn. So what we have here is a direct influence. They also very likely share the stylistic figure of intertwining storylines.
Concerning the other plays, things are less easy. The only real similarity between Mary Magdalen and Beunans Meriasek seems to be the burlesque ‘Mohammedan’ scene, that occurs in slightly different forms in both plays. One could have borrowed the scene from the other; which way the influence went is not sure, but for linguistic reasons (there weren’t many Englishmen that spoke Cornish, but most Cornish people spoke English) it is likely that if we do have a case of direct influence here, it was the English play that influenced the Cornish one. In the ‘prelude’ to the ‘Mohammedan’ scene in Mary Magdalen, a nice satire on priests practising the sin of gluttony is played out, that is reminiscent of the parodic humour of the Cornish plays.
Gwénolé seems to be the play that has the least in common with Beunans Meriasek. Featuring next to no humour, no intertwining storylines and no political references, and being written in a very different metre, one that is typical of Breton theatre but doesn’t seem to be close to Cornish metrics, this play seems to stand on its own in this discussion. The only parallel between Meriasek and Gwénolé seems to be that they are both more or less predestined to become saints: both are recognised as a child already as a holy person to be: Gwénolé by his uncle, king Gradlon, Meriasek by the teacher of Grammar.
Then there is this last, but very interesting point of comparison with Welsh cywydd poetry. Although Cornish plays do not use cywydd metres in their strict sense, the metres used are very close to cywydd, and it is probable that there are links between Cornish and Welsh literature, that could be explained either as a common origin of their metric systems, or a Welsh influence on Cornish literature.
What can we make of all this? In the end, it seems that the Cornish play Beunans Meriasek shares first and foremost traits, thematically, stylistically and metrically, with other Cornish plays, and most of all with Beunans Ke. There doesn’t seem to be so much influence from abroad. Regarding their content Cornish plays stand out because of their humour and their use of themes and characters that would appeal to the contemporary public: whether the author is taking a side in a political conflict in his depiction of king Teudar, or parodying the clergy and schoolmasters in his hyperbolic depiction of side characters, Beunans Meriasek and Beunans Ke are sparkling, up-to-date plays to which the public could relate. And this gives the Cornish plays its own and worthy place in the landscape of late medieval theatre.
Bibliography
E.M.R. Ditmas, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s allusions to Cornwall, in Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 510-524
G.H. Doble, Saint Meriadoc, patron of Camborne, in Saints of the Fal, Part III, Oxford 1964.
Gwenael an Dug (ed.), Buhez Genovefa a Vrabant, Rennes 2008.
E. Ernault (ed.), L’ancien mystère de Saint-Gwénolé, Rennes 1934.
Albert Le Grand, Les Vies des Saint de la Bretagne Armorique, Quimper 1901.
Markham Harris (trans.), The Life of Meriasek, Washington 1977.
John T. Koch, Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara and Oxford 2006.
John Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, Rhydychen 1925.
Brian Murdoch, Cornish Literature, Cambridge 1993.
Evelyn S. Newlyn, Middle Cornish Drama at the Milennium, in European Medieval Drama 2 (1998), pp. 197-206.
Donald C. Parker, John. L Murphy and Louis B. Hall jr. (ed), The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and A Museo 160, Oxford 1982, pp. 24-95.
Abbé Sionnet, M Legonidec (ed.), Buhez Santez Nonn, Paris 1837.
Graham Thomas, Nicholas Willams (ed.), Bewnans Ke, a critical edition with translation, Exeter 2007.
http://corpus.kernewek.cymru247.net/bmkk.txt (last visited 7/5/11).
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lawrence.roy/cornwall/1497.htm (last visited 4/4/2011).
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=dafyddapgwilymandthecywyddw (last visited 10/5/11).
[1] Brian Murdoch, Cornish Literature, Cambridge 1993, p.100.
[2] Graham Thomas, Nicholas Willams (ed.), Bewnans Ke, a critical edition with translation, Exeter 2007, p. xliv.
[3] Graham Thomas, Nicholas Willams (ed.), Bewnans Ke, a critical edition with translation, Exeter 2007.
[4] Evelyn S. Newlyn, Middle Cornish Drama at the Milennium, in European Medieval Drama 2 (1998), pp. 197-206, p. 198.
[5] Markham Harris (trans.), The Life of Meriasek, Washington 1977.
[6] Donald C. Parker, John. L Murphy and Louis B. Hall jr. (ed), The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133 and A Museo 160, Oxford 1982, pp. 24-95.
[7] E. Ernault (ed.), L’ancien mystère de Saint-Gwénolé, Rennes 1934.
[8] Bewnans Ke, l. 3064.
[9] G.H. Doble, Saint Meriadoc, patron of Camborne, in Saints of the Fal, Part III, Oxford 1964, pp. 506-509.
[10] Bewnans Ke, p. xlii.
[11] Bewnans Ke, p. xliii.
[12] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lawrence.roy/cornwall/1497.htm., last visited 4/4/2011.
[13] Albert Le Grand, Les Vies des Saint de la Bretagne Armorique, Quimper 1901, pp. 219-222.
[14] E.M.R. Ditmas, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s allusions to Cornwall, in Speculum 48 (1973), pp. 510-524, p. 519.
[15] Mary Magdalen, ll. 1143-1248.
[16] Beunans Meriasek, pp.95-97.
[17] Bewnans Ke, ll. 256-272.
[18] L’ancien mystère de saint Gwénolé, ll. 295-306.
[19] Beunans Meriasek, p. 32.
[20] Beunans Meriasek, pp. 34-35.
[21] Beunans Meriasek, p. 44.
[22] Beunans Meriasek, pp. 66-68.
[23] Beunans Ke, p. 336, note 92.
[24] Beunans Ke, ll. 31-32, l.92.
[25] L’ancien mystère de saint Gwénolé, ll. 1151-1278.
[26] L’ancien mystère de saint Gwénolé, ll. 999-1150.
[27] Mary Magdalen, ll. 1646-1671.
[28] Mary Magdalen, ll. 1745-1914.
[29] Beunans Meriasek, p. 23.
[30] L’ancien mystère de saint Gwénolé, ll. 398-473.
[31] Beunans Meriasek, pp. 22-23.
[32] Beunans Meriasek, pp. 51-53.
[33] Beunans Ke, ll. 144-329.
[34] Beunans Ke, ll. 338-417.
[35] Mary Magdalen, ll. 1143-1248.
[36] Mary Magdalen, ll. 1395-1422.
[37] L’ancien mystère de saint Gwénolé, ll.653-694.
[38] Beunans Meriasek, pp. 80-81.
[39] Albert Le Grand, Les Vies des Saint de la Bretagne Armorique, Quimper 1901, pp 506-509.
[40] Bewnans Ke, p. xxviii.
[41] Abbé Sionnet, M Legonidec (ed.), Buhez Santez Nonn, Paris 1837.
[42] Gwenael an Dug (ed.), Buhez Genovefa a Vrabant, Rennes 2008.
[43] Mary Magdalen, pp. xxxiv-xxxxvi.
[44] The original text of Beunans Meriasek may be found on http://corpus.kernewek.cymru247.net/bmkk.txt (last visited 7/5/11).
[45] John Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, Rhydychen 1925, pp. 316-317.
[46] http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=dafyddapgwilymandthecywyddw (last visited 10/5/11).
[47] John Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, pp. 328-329.
[48] John T. Koch, Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara and Oxford 2006, p. 542.
[49] John Morris-Jones, Cerdd Dafod, p. 329.