125 - Inter-Play Between the Religious and the Dramatic

Inter-Play Between the Religious and the Dramatic
By F. W. Dillistone

"In Greece, drama reached its apogee in such a tragedy as Antigone. In Israel, drama gained its highest expression in the passover ceremony. In Christendom, at least until the beginning of this century, sometimes the one type, sometimes the other, has been in the ascendant. But always there has been drama, for in some strange way it appears that no society can hold together with any permanence unless it engages in some form of dramatic expression."

NEARLY a century ago, in 1881, a Scottish youth, a recent graduate from the University of Glasgow, son of the distinguished minister of the Barony Church, paid his first visit to London. There he stayed with an uncle and revelled in new sights and novel experiences. The Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's Cathedral, Spurgeon's Tabernacle-these were natural centers of interest. But could he in conscience visit a theater, hitherto forbidden territory? A letter went post haste to his parents. Might he go and see Othello? Irving was playing. It was Shakespeare after all. "Now don't be alarmed," he wrote. "Sooner than go to a modern comedy, I would cut off my head."

Fifty six years later Cosmo Gordon Lang gave a long and detailed account of the Royal Coronation Ceremony at Westminster Abbey in which, as his biography puts it, he played the second "lead." The great Rite, "the great drama," he wrote, "from first to last it moved on, stage by stage, scene after scene, with unbroken tranquility, dignity and beauty." He spoke of the Abbey as "the theater," and he recorded the pains taken with rehearsals. In fact, as his biographer comments,

Frederick W. Dillistone, one of the "founding fathers" of THEOLOGY TODAY, is Wellknown for his books on art and theology and for his distinguished service to teaching and the church on both sides of the Atlantic. He is the author of Christianity and Symbolism (1955), Christianity and Communication (1956), The Novelist and the Passion Story (1960), and editor of Myth and Symbol (1966), and with James Waddell of Art and Religion as Communication (1973). He has served as Canon of Liverpool Cathedral and professor of theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto, Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., and Oriel College, Oxford. In 1968, he delivered the Bampton Lectures at Oxford, which were published as Traditional Symbols and the Contemporary World(1973).

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the language of the theater again and again slipped from his pen. "It was surely," he says, "the country's good fortune that in 1937 the Archbishop of Canterbury was not only a churchman who took an exalted view of the Rite but also an actor and producer of the first order." The casting of the second "lead" was "beyond reproach or possibility of improvement." (See John Gilbert Lockhart's Cosmo Gordon Lang, 1949).

I have found it interesting to return to Mr. Lockhart's fine biography of the Archbishop, not least for the way in which it illuminates the relation between church and theater, between religion and drama, between minister and actor. The suspicion of theater in the manse, and yet the irresistibility or Shakespeare; the Puritan aversion to the stage, and yet the participation of a whole nation in the high drama of Coronation; the uneasy feeling that an actor is not quite sincere, he is putting on an act, and yet the admiration we cannot withhold from anyone, whether in a sacred or secular context, who fills a particular role with style and feeling and distinction.

"Lang," Lockhart writes, "was fully aware of his gift and of its woes. His sense of the theater never left him. But to say that he was a great actor is very far from saying that he was a great humbug. Indeed the opposite is true, for without an essential sincerity, no acting can be great. He had a clear picture of what an Archbishop should be, how he should look and behave and live. As a man might school himself to play Hamlet or Othello, he schooled himself to play the part, and in time, like any good actor, he merged himself in it and became what he was playing" (p. 202). That is finely said. The trouble arises, of course, if ever the actor comes to believe that the role itself is divinely ordained in some particular form, and that he himself is the only man who is qualified to play it.

I

From this modern illustration, I pass straightway to two general statements. The first is that over a very long period of human history, certain forms of religion have been intimately related to certain forms of drama. In certain societies, all religion has been dramatic in form, and all drama has been religious. The second is that again and again in human history, certain dramatic forms have been denounced as being inimical to true religion. If ever a cultural love-hate relationship could be said to exist, it has been between religion and drama. At times, the union has been mutually enriching. At times, the antagonism has been mutually destructive. Why this strange ambivalence?

The only way in which I can begin to unravel the situation is by recognizing that neither religion nor drama exists in one single form. So easily we assume that religion means the ordered worship of a transcendent being and that alone; or that drama means the ordered portrayal of a life-situation ("holding a mirror up to nature"), and that this is the only form in which drama can be expressed. Any ex-

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clusive definition or formulation of this kind is bound to lead either to the attempt to equate religion and drama or to the creation of an absolute antagonism between the two. I want to suggest a rather different approach to the problem.

I suggest that in the realms both of religion and of drama we in the west are the inheritors of two major traditions. Our religion we regard as derived almost entirely from the supreme revelation of God to which the Bible bears witness; our drama from the superb artistic performances of Greece whose character has been preserved for all time in the texts of such authors as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Religion, if it is to be authentic, needs to conform to the pattern of response to a particular revelation; drama, to be authentic, needs to conform to tragedy or comedy as structured by the leading dramatists of Greece. This may seem an exaggeration. But at least until recently these have been the primary references of the words "religion" and "drama" in our western world.

Of course it needs but a moment's reflection to recognize that so far as religion is concerned the early Christian culture very soon assumed much of the form of Greek drama. The eucharist, in particular, was a constantly repeated tragedia in which many actors took part and in which the whole community was involved. The ritual actions and the liturgical language became increasingly formalized, and in medieval Europe drama existed only within a religious setting. The church was the theater; the eternal passion of God was the drama; the sacred ministers were the actors. To all intents and purposes, religion and drama had become one.

II

Due to all kinds of reasons, the unity of religion and drama gradually dissolved and disintegrated. Chief among them for our purpose were, on the one side, the discovery of the Reformers that medieval religion was not the only kind of authentic religious expression; some very different forms could be found by a careful study of the biblical revelation. On the other side, the rediscovery of the classics led to the realization that the possibilities of dramatic form were not exhausted by the redemption rituals of the mystery and the morality plays. Suddenly, in the sixteenth century, a second form of religious expression appeared in Europe, a form derived largely from Hebraic models. Similarly, a second form of dramatic expression appeared, a form derived largely from the myths and practices of the classical world, a form more appropriate for a secular theater than for a church.

Still, however, there remained much in common between the ritual forms of the Catholic church and those of the renaissance theater. They shared a deep sense that a divine order manifested itself in both natural and human life. The rhythm of the seasons, the stages of human life (birth, adolescence, marriage, maturity, death), the hierar-

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chical structure of the community-these were celebrated dramatically through ordered ritual and poetic language in both contexts. The distinction now was that the secular theater acknowledged no direct dependence on the church, and its actors were neither ecclesiastical officials nor even licensed by church authority. They were laypersons briefed to play their parts in lay-interpretations of the ultimate divine order. The existence of such a divine order was still assumed; violations of this order were portrayed; but whereas in the context of churchly drama the restoration of order could be accomplished only by churchly means, in the new secular drama humans must pay the price for their own misdeeds here on earth by punishment, deprivation, suffering, and even death. Human struggle with the built-in order of this world can no longer be resolved by a simple appeal to the sacramental remedies of the church.

But what was the situation within Reformed Christianity? Not unnaturally, there was at first a fierce reaction away from the kind of drama that was in any way associated with medieval ritual forms. And the new secular drama, with its concentration upon human conflicts within the natural order, could hardly appeal to those who had gained a new vision of destiny within the eternal Kingdom of God. Yet the fact remained that the Bible is packed with records which it seems natural to describe as dramatic in character. What, for example, could be more dramatic than the story of Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian host? Only it is a different kind of drama from that which derives from Greece. It is a drama which has its origin not in rhythm and dancing, but in encounter and engagement. not in the regularities of the land and the seasons and the generations but in the critical surprises which befall the nomad in meeting with the stranger, or the prey, or even with the angel of the Lord. It is a form of drama which expresses itself not in regular cyclic ritual with many actors assuming traditional roles but through rare commemorative festivals when a whole society celebrates under the guidance of some inspired leader. It is the drama of the memorial, the covenant, the protest, the happening. It breaks the bounds of ordinary theater, but it still has every right to be known as drama.

III

There appear to be two distinct types of drama. There is drama that has developed from the dance, the form of activity in which a society identifies itself artistically with some aspect of the rhythmic life-process of the natural order. There is also drama that has developed from the covenant, the form of activity in which one society identifies some part of its own corporate-existence artistically with that of another society. The most poignant expression of drama of the first type is tragedy, for tragedy is always concerned with the dance of

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death and its reversal through new life. The supreme expression of drama of the second type is the covenant in blood, for this is concerned with the restoration of ordered relations, with the complete death of alienation and separation, and the creation of new life in the fellowship of reconciliation.

In Greece, drama reached its apogee in such a tragedy as Antigone. In Israel, drama gained its highest expression in the passover ceremony. In Christendom, at least until the beginning of this century, sometimes the one type, sometimes the other, has been in the ascendancy. But always there has been drama, for in some strange way it appears that no society can hold together with any permanence unless it engages in some form of dramatic expression.

That the Catholic tradition has fostered drama of the first type would probably be readily allowed. What is less often admitted is that the Protestant and Reformed tradition has also fostered drama, albeit of the second type. The Catholic tradition has recognized a sevenfold cycle of life within which human existence is framed, and this pattern is regularly and constantly celebrated through its ordered sacramental system. Yet within this tradition, one form of drama has always been given a place of eminence, the eucharist, the sacramental action which has the closest possible correspondence to Greek tragedy, the ritual enactment in which a sacrificial victim is sacramentally offered in order that all breaches of the ingrained order of things may be annulled and true harmony may be restored.

On the other side, the Reformed tradition has recognized a relation of reciprocity, a give and take, a freedom of communication apart from which real life just does not exist. This pattern of relationship is dramatically celebrated whenever society, or a group within a society, meets together to set forth God's most worthy praise and to hear God's most holy word. Yet again, within this tradition, one form of drama has normally, I will not say always, occupied a place of eminence. It is the Lord's Supper, the solemn re-enactment of the Covenant which has the closest affinity to the Hebrew passover feast, the ceremony in and through which all covenant breaches may be repaired and a true communion may be renewed between creature and Creator as well as between all human beings and their neighbors.

It is strange that those within the Reformed tradition have been so suspicious of drama. All that I have read, for example, about a Sunday service in Free St. George's in Edinburgh, in the days of Alexander Whyte, leads me to conclude that those were occasions of intense and exalted drama. This, in fact, is claimed by that sensitive interpreter, J.M.E. Ross, in his preface to the noble volume of Whyte's sermons on prayer. Occasionally, very occasionally, he says, but all the more effectively because so seldom, the dramatic instinct found scope in a lengthy quotation from Shakespeare or even from Ibsen. The intellectual and spiritual effect was almost overwhelming the

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morning he preached on our Lord's prayer in Gethsemane. Dwelling for a moment on the seamless robe with the blood of the garden and of the pillar upon it, he suddenly broke off into the passage from Julius Caesar: "You all do know this mantle: I remember/The first time Caesar put it on." It was a daring experiment, but in Alexander Whyte's hands extraordinarily moving. The sermon closed with a great shout, "Now let it work! And so to the Communion Feast in which all are re-sealed and re-covenanted within the body and blood of Christ." (See J.M.E. Ross' volume of Whyte's sermons on prayer, Lord, Teach Us to Pray, 1922).

IV

There have been noble efforts in this century to repristinate drama within the context of Catholic Christianity or to commend religious faith within the context of the theater. The liturgical movement has had as its first aim to re-create the church as a theater-in-the-round in which every worshipper could sustain a role within the total eucharistic action. Obversely, T. S. Eliot sought to create a religious atmosphere and religious reference within the secular theater, and through such plays as Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party to open the eyes of his audience to that transcendental sanction which may call for the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice which has constantly been celebrated in its highest form in the ritual of the Mass.

In Reformed Christianity, whereas preaching as dramatic performance may have lost some of its appeal, the Word-of-God-theology has sought to re-emphasize the central purpose of the assembly on the Lord's Day-the purpose namely of coming together into a situation where there may be a real encounter with God. This is essentially a dramatic situation. The preacher undoubtedly plays the chief part but depends upon a real meeting with the congregation, and all are dependent upon the coming of the Word of God. The tendency has been to play down emotion, artistry, dramatic context, and to concentrate upon the Word alone. Whether this movement has adequately represented the dramatic method of Jesus' own parabolic words and actions may be open to question. But insofar as there has been a renewed direction of attention to the meeting, the encounter, the tension, the overcoming of alienation in the crisis, an essential element of drama has, I think, been re-discovered. The problem remains whether on the human side the setting and procedure have any real link with the social crisis of our own times.

In the theater, the playwrights who have raised the religious question acutely have been those who have brought the drama of the struggle between an individual's conscience and social conformity vividly before our eyes. Among numerous examples, I mention only one, Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Standing himself within the Hebraic tradition, subjected to an intense pressure to conform politically,

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Miller chose the setting of Puritan New England to show how in the last resort a man will die rather than deny that pressure of the transcendent which he may call his name, his integrity, his truth but which, in fact, is the call of God which he is ready to honor even with his own life blood. This seems to me a supreme example in our own day of a form of religious drama within the ordinary secular theater.

The dance and the covenant, the celebration and the commitment, these seem to me to be perennial human concerns which we express symbolically and artistically through dramatic forms. For long periods in human history, they have been enacted within a religious context. More recently, the secular theater has separated itself from the church. Yet in a very real sense, the ultimate concerns to live confidently and to communicate meaningfully remain the same in both contexts. It is, I believe, the task of a full-orbed theology to seek to interpret these concerns in Whatever context they are to be found.