Many of us remember participating in Nativity pageants growing up – wearing flimsy angel wings, halos, and wrinkled white sheets or paper crowns and robes that nearly swallowed us whole. But this tradition of performing pageants didn’t dawn with the 21st or even the 20th century. In the Medieval period, the anonymous “Wakefield Master” wrote The Second Shepherds’ Play which, through its theatrical format, enabled the Medieval English church to reach both literate and illiterate audiences with the Nativity story. As part of the Wakefield Mystery Cycle – a series of 32 plays exhibiting various Bible stories – this play was performed by theatre guilds on pageant wagons, typically in town squares to reach the masses. Today, this archaic play’s slapstick tone may come across as shocking. The religious iconography that is representative of the Medieval church, with its complex symbolism and disconcerting physical proportions, strikes the modern eye as distant, even alien. The divine, enshrined in gold foil, appears insurmountably separated from the mundane. The Second Shepherds’ Play, with its playful, earthy, and personable tone, reveals a surprising new side of Medieval religion.
The Second Shepherds’ Play synthesizes slapstick comedy and utmost reverence. The Wakefield Master crafts the biblical shepherds to be true mirrors of the common man. The play opens with a series of melodramatic monologues from the three shepherds named Coll, Gib, and Daw. Instantly relatable, Coll begins the scene by bemoaning the cold weather and harsh climate before launching into a comical complaint regarding serious affairs: the political and economic conditions of the time. During the first portion of the play, characters swear by innumerable saints and sacrilegiously misquote Latin phrases. They exclaim, “Judas carnas dominus!” which roughly translates, “Judas, incarnate Lord!” or “Manus tuas commendo / Pontio Pilato,” which means “Thy hands I commend to Pontius Pilate.” However, when an angel of God invites these lowly shepherds to witness what patriarchs and prophets “desired to have seen,” they journey in reverence to see Jesus and their dialogue and manner completely transform. The stark difference between their comedic humanity and their reverence for Jesus parallels the spiritual shift that the Gospel produces from having a worldly perspective to having a heavenly one.
The Wakefield Master creates further parallelism between the comedic and the reverent with the play’s imagery of lambs. When the three shepherds awake one morning and notice that their guest, Mak, has disappeared along with a lamb of their fold, they hasten to Mak’s home to accuse him of the theft and search the premises. After finding no stolen lamb in his household, the three penitent shepherds seek to make amends for their “unfounded” accusation by honoring Mak’s newest child. When Daw stoops to bequeath a kiss on the so-called “newborn,” he exclaims, “What the devil is this? / He has a long snout!” Daw reveals the lamb, which under the guise of “newborn,” Mak used to conceal his theft. The scene then climaxes in absurdity when they toss Mak to the floor in a blanket, a Medieval practice performed to induce labour in pregnant women. Carrying the lamb back to the flock, Gib jovially cracks jokes about its hefty weight. In contrast, the true Lamb of God is not stolen, but sent and given. He did not merely veil sin but conquered it. Compared to the hefty weight of Gib’s lamb, this Lamb of God would one day carry the hefty weight of their sin and bring rest from oppression. These contrasts encourage the audience to consider the magnitude of Christ’s coming, if they are not distracted by the obvious absurdity of the characters.
Reading The Second Shepherds’ Play prompts the question “How far is too far?” Does slapstick comedy have a place in the Nativity narrative? Is this play irreverent? I would argue that the synthesis of slapstick comedy and utmost reverence in The Second Shepherds’ Play accentuates several aspects of the Gospel story but crosses the line from humor into irreverence in the process. In attempting to give the audience a touch point, the Wakefield Master sacrifices the story’s purity. Instead of bringing biblical stories “down to earth,” we should allow them to lift our eyes upward to see heaven. There’s nothing wrong with playful stories dealing with serious topics, and the amount of “irreverence” one is willing to tolerate ought to be a matter of individual conscience. However, I would encourage an attitude of reverence when presenting the story of the Nativity. Finally, we must remember that the best and only truly reliable source of the Gospel story is the Bible itself.
If The Second Shepherds’ Play is irreverent, should it be completely disregarded by Christian scholars and students? In my opinion, great works of literature should not be sifted by their theological perfection, but by their ability to provoke profitable contemplation in the reader. However, audiences and readers approaching reinvented biblical stories should certainly engage with a degree of caution. Not everything worth reading or thinking about is prescriptive to our daily lives. The Second Shepherds’ Play makes a helpful case study, because it’s so removed from our modern culture that personal sentimentality can’t cloud our vision. However, I believe we should apply the same discerning eye to our modern Christmas stories, films, and practices. Regardless of whether you personally believe The Second Shepherds’ Play crosses the line, this work can serve as a needed reminder to engage meaningfully with familiar stories and traditions this holiday season.
