Dragon School

Abstract: This article proposes that important aspects of Twelfth Night are illuminated by knowledge of Reformation eucharistie controversies, specifically over transubstantiation. Precedent is supplied by the anonymous Jack Juggler (printed c. 1562). Some puzzling passages in the play, especially the speeches of Feste, are elucidated by reference to Lollard writings and controversial exchanges between Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner. The play's conjunction of an incamational philosophy with a self-conscious awareness of drama as an art of the body is set against the broader background of medieval dramatic representations of the Mass, and of contemporary writing on the body. Without wishing to adjudicate the current critical dispute about Shakespeare's religious allegiances, this essay will add to evidence, widely accepted on all sides, that his plays exploit, in a necessarily oblique fashion, the power of pre-Reformation religious imagery and iconography.1 For whatever reason, Twelfth Night seems to be a particularly rich example of this process,2 and I shall hope to show that important aspects of the play's meaning depend upon recognition of allusions to eucharistie theology, specifically the doctrine of transubstantiation, declared de fide by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, eventually giving rise to the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi which was the occasion for the great drama cycles of medieval England.3 To forestall the reaction that this proposal is 'more matter for a May morning' (III.iv.140) I shall first point to a play, almost certainly known to Shakespeare, which, like Twelfth Night, draws its plot from the Amphitruo of Plautus and makes unambiguous allusions to transubstantiation. This is Jack Juggler, printed c. 1562 and usually ascribed to Nicholas Udall. According to its modern editor, Marie Axton, Jack Juggler contains references to 'the bewildering metaphysics of Catholic doctrine on the eucharist' and Literature & Theology 17/j © Oxford University Press 2003; all rights reserved. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.76 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:26:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 282 TWELFTH NIGHT AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION more generally presents 'a comic paradigm of the crisis of personal identity which was a common experience for those who lived through the Henrician break with Rome, the Edwardian reformation and Marian counter reformation'.4 Shakespeare's probable knowledge of the play hinges on his earlier use of the Amphitruo in The Comedy of Errors. Presumably he read Plautus' play in Latin, although an English translation had existed since 1562/3, but his use of the term jugglers' (Errors I.ii.98) together with a lengthy passage (Ill.i.i 1-85) seemingly parodying the style of the interlude genre to which Udall's play belongs, are suggestive pointers. Admittedly, the term 'juggler' is found elsewhere as a Protestant term of abuse for a Catholic priest,5 but that only strengthens the case for Shakespeare's awareness of the sectarian issue. Moreover, Jenkin's attempt to prove his own physical existence to himself—'Do not I speak now? Is not this my hand?' (line 514)—anticipates Sebastian's 'This is the air, that is the glorious sun' (IV.iii.i), though both of course derive from Plautus,6 while Jenkin's later assertion that 'my five wits I have' (line 584) can be set alongside Feste's asking Malvolio 'how fell you besides your five wits?' (IV.ii.86). (Feste, we note, like Jack, is determined to drive his adversary mad by convincing him that he is suffering from delusions.) But perhaps the most significant parallel is Jenkin's use, which Viola will echo, of the formula 'I am I' (line 497), about which I shall say more later. Jack Juggler dramatises the revenge of Jack, a page, against his adversary Jenkin Careaway for some unspecified slight. He vows 'to make Jenkin believe, if I can,/That he is not himself, but another man' (lines 178-9), and succeeds so well that Jenkin comes to accept that Jack, his 'other I' (line 628), is indeed himself, and has taken over his identity. When he tries to explain this to his master, Boungrace, he is met with scom: Why, thou naughty villain, darest thou affirm to me That which was never seen nor hereafter shall be? That one man may have two bodies and two faces? And that one man at one time may be in two places? (784—7) Immediately we recall Orsino's astonishment as he witnesses the onstage meeting of Viola and Sebastian: 'One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons,/A natural perspective, that is and is not!' (V.i.216-7), and Antonio's question, 'How have you made division of yourself?' (V.i.222). On one level, Udall and Shakespeare are playing with paradoxes of identity. On another, however, Udall at least is making a clear allusion to eucharistie controversy, for the theory 'that one man at one time may be in two places' was the target of the notorious 'Black Rubric' appended, by order of the Privy Council, to the Communion Service in the Prayer Book of 1552. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.76 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:26:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms