The Towneley Tyrants
Graduation Date
Summer 1966
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
Pharaoh, Caesar Augustus, Herod the Great, and Pontius Pilate—the four tyrants of the Towneley or Wakefield cycle of Corpus Christ! plays --have a predominant role throughout the range of the cycle. Both Pharaoh and Caesar Augustus appear in single plays named after them. Herod the Great features in two plays; Pontius Pilate figures in five Plays, four times as one of the major characters and once as a minor character. Thus, nine of the cycle's thirty-two plays have as a character one of the four tyrants.
Their pervasive role in the scope of the cycle can be superficially attributed to the simple fact that their appearance is merely the record of Sacred Scripture upon which the plays are, in great part, based. However, the similarity of the tyrants, both in word and act, demands a better explanation than the mere frequency of their appearance in Scripture. The words they speak and their obsession with power definitely transcend the picture of them which Sacred Scripture presents. Indeed, the dramatist, no doubt directed by Scripture, legend, and ecclesiastical exegesis in his portrayal of the four tyrants, has created his tyrants in such a fashion that they seem to personify the medieval concept of tyranny.
In this study I propose to examine the characters of the four Towneley tyrants in their particular plays and against the medieval concept of tyranny and its evils. I suggest that the plays, while they contain no explicit references to medieval ideas about tyranny, do incorporate in the characters of the tyrants so much of medieval thought concerning tyrants and tyranny that one can find here the dramatized version of medieval political theory concerning tyranny.
I shall first consider the tyrants as they appear in the plays. Then after drawing the general characteristics of the Towneley tyrants, I shall briefly discuss the typological and tropological context in which these tyrants were viewed and, then, the medieval concept of tyranny. Thus, by using the plays themselves, ecclesiastical exegesis, contemporary references, and the works of medieval writers and subsequent political historians, I hope to suggest a connection between the Towneley cycle's tyrants and medieval political thought—a connection which some scholars have alluded to but have not, to my knowledge, ever studied at length.