Emblems and emblematic dramas A Picture, though with most exactnesse made,

Is nothing but the Shadow of a Shade.

For, ev’n our living Bodies, (though they seeme To others more, or more in our esteeme) Are but the shadowes of that Reall-being, Which doth extend beyond the Fleshly-seeing;

And, cannot be discerned, till we rise Immortall-objects, for Immortall-eyes.²

George Wither’s poem describing the emblem tells us that reality is be-yond what we see.

The present paper deals with exactly the same idea in the theatre, with the relation of the visual and verbal aspects of 17^th-18^th century (mostly Jesuit) school performances where the story, the plot taking place on the stage, had something behind (or beyond) it, a secret meaning in the depth to be decoded.

17^th-18^th century dramas often had two parallel layers: the plot (main plot), and its allegorical interpretation shown in the framing scenes. (All the prologues, epilogues, interludes, choruses, etc. are in a framing

posi-1 To the Reader = Emblemes by Fran[cis] Quarles, London, posi-1658. (The preface is missing from the first edition of 1635.)

2 George Wither [1588–1667] (in: A Collection of Emblems, 1635) Quoted as a motto of the chapter The Jacobean Masque (Kogan 1984, 39.)

tion within the structure: every two of them provide the frame of a part of the main plot; thus I call them framing scenes.) I chose historical dramas with a continuous allegorical story parallel with the realistic main plot.

According to Peter Daly, “[d]uring the 16^th and 17^th centuries, dra-ma in its various forms was the most embledra-matic of all the literary art, combining as it does a visual experience of character and gesture, silent tableaux and active scene, with a verbal experience of the spoken and oc-casionally the written word.”³ The emblematic drama uses the interaction of text and vision.⁴

“‘Emblem’ originally meant mosaic, insert or inlay, and it is no co-incidence that individual emblems make miniature statements complete in themselves.”⁵ “The emblem is introduced by a short motto, or inscrip-tio, beneath which stands a pictura, and beneath this again is printed an explanation or subscriptio.”⁶ “The emblem can be regarded as a mode of thought combining thing or word with meaning, and as an art form com-bining visual images and textual components.”⁷

On the stage, the equivalent of pictura and inscriptio is the main plot called representation, the interpretation (cf. subscriptio) of which is given in the allegorical scenes.⁸ Accordingly, we have two parallel tales: the main plot or plot proper usually depicting a realistic story (most often taken from history) and the framing scenes showing an unrealistic one. The main plot and the allegorical scenes explain and refer to each other; thus, the two parallel plots, with a very special network of inter-relation, pro-vide a complex system of text and muta, word and spectacle, earthly and unearthly story, individual and non-individual figures; thus the notion of real and unreal have lost or changed their original meaning. (Modern studies also speak of a double understanding and decoding when dealing with the framing scenes and the meta-dramas inserted in the main plot.⁹)

3 Daly 1979a, 134.

4 Cf. Valentin 1978, 317; Mehl 1998; Knapp 2003. On allegorical scenery and spectacles, see Davidson 1991 examining the English data prior to 1580.

5 Daly 2003, 385.

6 Daly 1979a, 151; Daly 1979b, 21.

7 Daly 2003, 383.

8 Daly 1979a, 162.

9 See: Miner 1990, 41-42.

1.1. The practice on the stage

As pupils of the 17^th-18th century must have been rather bored by the Latin plays in the school theatres, the teachers inserted vivid interludes between the acts, thus making understanding and decoding easier. We know very little of the stage design and other circumstances of the per-formances: the manuscripts contain only a few short instructions and the programmes give only the story. Nevertheless, one finds hidden in-formation in the lists of dramatis personae, diaries and memoirs. Based on these descriptions and the beautiful drawings of the Sopron Collec-tion of Jesuit Stage Designs (1999), we may state that the framing scenes were extremely spectacular, as the audience had to be cheered up and refreshed after the rather boring Latin main plot. There was little or even no text recited in the framing scenes, which simply stood in contrast with the verbalistic main plot. The allegorical scenes were often mute perfor-mances, spectacular tableaux vivants without any motion, or, on the other hand, pantomimic motion, with dance becoming most important. Music and spectacle dominated the stage: colourful props and curtains – in the richer schools, also machinery – were used, while speech and dialogues were less important or completely left out. The interludes called chorus were the same, i.e. they did not necessarily mean only a song or choir. The spectacular allegorical scenes had some didactic aspects, as they could involve many pupils (sometimes even crowds) on the stage.

This practice goes back to the intermezzi of the Medicis’ court and the Stuart court masques,¹⁰ but was mainly directed by the 17^th-18^th century school books on poetics, which were quite sophisticated when dealing with the different parts of drama and prescribed an interpreting allegori-cal plot in parallel with the main plot. The moral or main message was to be deducted not from the events of the realistic plot but from its pure idea (‘ex idea argumenti vel totius fabulae’) shown in the allegorical scenes.¹¹ The message was conveyed by the mythological figures, personalized ideas and properties, the genuses of the framing scenes. The events of the

10 For the masques, see: Daly 1979a, 163-167.

11 According to Du Cygne, the most influential 17^th century Jesuit theorist, the pro-logue, epilogue and the choruses – i.e. the framing scenes – were not parts of the (main) plot (Martinus Du Cygne, De arte poetica libri duo, Leodii, 1664.). Cf. Knapp 2003, 164-165. The other theorist, Franz Neumayr, mentioned that the musical interludes parallel with the main plot helped understanding. For Franz Neumayr’s Idea Poesos, see: Valentin 1972, 184-190.

main plot might be accidental but their allegorical interpretation proved to be infallible and eternal. The schools, especially the Jesuit institutes, wanted to strengthen the central didactic messages with repetition, and they directed understanding with the help of music and spectacle affect-ing sensibility.