Hrotsvitha von Gandersheim (935–1002)

This was harder to review than Dulcitius, which was just good preachy farcical fun. I like that there's the extended meditation on music at the beginning, because I love the whole concept of the music of the spheres--even if in practice here the metaphysics gets a bit thick. (There is an easy feminist reading of this play in which Paphnutius is trying to impose cosmic order on Thaïs's messy female body.) And I like that it throws not one, but two twists at you--the revelation that Thaïs is a Christian, that the seed of her salvation is already planted, which takes us off down a whole different kind of penitential road than we've been seeming to go down; and then the neat reversal of her position with Antony's--the bed of glory is not for him, it is for her, the sinner. Not only does that show good dramatic sense (which I come to realize is part of what was missing in Hrotsy's pseudo-contemporary Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, which I would judge much less harshly as pure spectacle than as theatre, if that makes sense); it also shows that Hrotsvitha has a heart.

But over time, like a racist uncle who just needs two more beers, that heart inevitably expresses itself in a twisted way. All the scholarly detachment and openness to considering the arbitrary foundations of one's own culture and belief system and thus maintain an open mind to others foreign in space or time sometimes can't get you over the fact that this is a play whose essential message is lady has sexual pleasure, lady must climb into a box for three years, at the end of which time she must die. Maybe that's why Dulcitius was easier to review--it's a play about Christian fortitude and faith, whereas this is about telling us that the sick human desire to punish oneself is actually gonna buy us a ticket to harptown. Surely that's as much to be rejected in 1011 as in 2011.… (more)