The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe by John Parker, (herein, The Aesthetics of Antichrist) is more a hermeneutic than theatrical inquiry. Considering that the title of this assiduously researched academic book conjoins late Roman and early Renaissance dramatic art, the scholarly mother-lode would seem to be apparent: the manifestation of the Antichrist (on stage) from Constantine to Marlowe. Decidedly, from a dramaturgical perspective, this is not completely the case. As such, if you are anticipating abundant theater exposition in this attractively produced Cornell University Press publication you will probably be frustrated; if, however, you are anticipating an idiosyncratic specialty book on variant issues in hagiography, Papal diplomatics, Biblical accommodation, oblation, and ecclesiastical letters, The Aesthetics of Antichrist is a signal work.
In his Preface to The Aesthetics of Antichrist, Parker, Associate Professor of English at Macalester College, enunciates a clear objective for this project: "It will be the task of this book to argue that Marlowe separates sacred and secular drama--the Middle Ages, as it were, from High Renaissance--the way a common wall divides adjacent rooms" (viii). As promising as that supposition sounds, it is problematic. That is, I'm not sure how argumentative his themes of separation and common wall are. For theater historians Christopher Marlowe would seem to be an apposite demarcation separating the theater of sacred spaces (an authentic, amateur, cultist theater) and the ascribed, professional, market-driven theater of careerists like Marlowe, Kyd and Shakespeare. So, the thesis--the task--of Professor Parker's book is not so much argumentative as it is an accomplished fact.
Beyond his Preface, Professor Parker presents an Introduction and four chapters, each subdivided into smaller units of scholarship. The titles of these units are poetic (if protracted) and, for this reader, elusive or ironical. A few examples: The Orthodoxy of Heresy; Judas Superstar; The Offertory as Price of Admission; Coda: The Blood Money of Mankind; Jesus Barabbas Son of God; Vicarious Criminal: Christ as Representative; and (paradoxically) Marlowe the Antichrist. Ordinarily the purpose of publication front-matter is organization and clarity, not vagary; that is, Professor Parker's chapter headings and subdivisions neither outline or modify his compilations, and create an obscure point of departure. Obscurity is not a standard characteristic of a scholarly digest as serious and as focused as The Aesthetics of Antichrist.
In a lengthy and argumentative citation in his Introduction, Pro. Parker tweaks eminent Professor of church history, Bernard McGinn, for his theory on the occurrence of an Antichrist: "He [McGinn] continues with the remark that the Antichrist legend 'resulted logically from the opposition between good and evil [...]'" (3 n. 6). Professor Parker's riposte: "I offer considerable resistance to this view point, on the grounds that the "logic" behind Antichrist is not that of binary opposition between good and evil but rather of dialectical cooperation" (3 n. 6). "Considerable resistance" is code for changeability; so, basically, through his model of opposition vs. cooperation, Professor Parker is throwing down the sword. That is, new legends of Antichrist--new forms and traditions--and (accordingly) a new logic, are the real tasks--the agenda--of Professor Parker's project.
The meat and material of The Aesthetics of Antichrist begins in Chapter 1--The Typological Image: "Typos means literally an impression, as in wax or coin. Taken at face value the term suggests that the precursors of Christ (and even Christ's first appearance) anticipate fulfillment the way an empty indentation bears the image of its absent seal" (49). Professor Parker's explication of the loathsome Antichrist as a counterfeit reproduction of Christ (a converse image) is engaging, and likens the resurgence of the Antichrist myth to the tenacious and reoccurring "bad penny." Professor Parker explains that the polarity (and sameness) of good and evil is captured in the impression or antitype that a coin or typos reproduces: "Historical existence, though disastrous in itself, foreshadows redemption through the determinant emptiness of a mirror image or typological impression" (50). This is a numinous approach to the mythology of Antichrist, and a surreal contextualization of a hardwearing aspect of inscription.
Professor Parker follows on his segment on antitypes with Miracula, a measured deliberation of the phenomena of staged miracles, bogus saints and "quotidian evidence" in the protocols for canonization in the early Church (62). Professor Parker's citations and commentary on St. Jerome, Pope Innocent III, and Francis Bacon, build a layered discussion around the obsessive fears of church elders for the likelihood of "the satanically cagey" reinventing "the spectacle of God's ingenuity" (62). Professor Parker acknowledges the irony of matching the austere Pope Innocent and the enigmatic Bacon ("...the unlikeliest of bedfellows"), but explains that the wide avenue for fraudulence in these quasi-sacred and theatrical circumstances was a unifying principle of the Chair of Peter, and centuries later, the "empiricist" Bacon: "Not incidentally the two of them also shared an aversion to performance" (62). Parker closes this segment on "medieval antitheatricalism" with a summary discussion of The Decameron, and Ciappelletto ("only the worst man alive"), and the "miraculum" of "reprobates" and bogus confessors (62, 63). As always, the Professor's topics, and lexis are myriad and figurative, and well worth enumerating: "fallen history," "demonic impersonation," "church ales and wrestling matches," "Satan's whole entourage of silly tricksters"; "Satanic jugglers," "stupefying spectacles," "quaking shepherds," "monsters, sign, portents, prodigies", and, the euphonious (if daunting) citation: The Writer as Liar: Narrative Technique in The Decameron (63, 63 n. 37).
Chapter 1 will be an exhilarating read for students and scholars inclined to clerical aberrations. Professor Parker's narrative identifies a number of absorbing historical anomalies. These include Augustine; "the blessed Hilary"; Gerhoch [sic] of Reichersberg [1]; Gilbert of Poitiers; and the belligerent Luther. As always, biographies of saints, martyrs and eminent clergy can be apocryphal and slip into the arcane, but Professor Parker's earnest evaluation of the conflicted Gerhoch is powerful and sympathetic, and replicates an oral history: "Like his patron saint Augustine, Gerhoch too had fallen victim to the Satanic ruse of theatrical spectacle when young; as master of the scholars and doctors at the Augsburg Cathedral (ca. 1117 to ca. 1120) he oversaw the staging of liturgical plays, to which he was then regrettably devoted" (75). Professor Parker's summation of this strident, confused and talented Augustinian is powerful and consuming. Students of medieval church and society have much to glean from this thorough, organized and dramatic account.
Following his discussion of typography and antitypes Professor Parker identifies a scene from the Chester Cycle as a basis for his discussion on typography and oblation. His scene of choice ("...unique among Antichrist plays") (81) is prescient of the conjuring and levitation scenes in Macbeth [2] and calls to mind the curative powers of the sacraments (the host as prop) as ritualized in the glut of 70's possession films, Mummy remakes, and horror fests: "'Alas, put that bread out of my sight!'" cries the first corpse, his miraculous reanimation now exposed as a form of demonic possession: [...]" (81). Obviously, Professor Parker has an acute sense of the macabre and kitsch (yes, kitsch), and uses it to augment this formidable, if campy, reenactment.
Professor Parker's consideration of medieval shared forms as an admixture of cant and camp is central to his discussion (and the mission) of the Chester Antichrist: "Medieval drama at its most demonic, at its most bloody and grotesque, at its most slapstick and retrograde, still hoped to participate in genuine revelation" (80). As the Professor reveals, The Chester Cycle is inspired playmaking; and Enoch and Elias (the dramatic dyad in The Chester Plays) are a matrix for the archetypal celebrants, grifters (and dopes) of Moliere, Gheon, Pirandello, Fellini, Dario Fo and other writers and hecklers of worship and social order. This is an ancillary point to the Professor's findings, but an imperative. The connection of medieval and modern, sacred and profane, dramatic to filmic, is direct and unmistaken. Within this segment, students of shared forms-- from Enoch and Elias to Hamm and Clov--will have a fresh point of departure for discussion, practice, inquiry, and discovery.
Professor Parker's second chapter, Blood Money: Antichristian Economics and the Drama of Sacraments, incorporates three discussions: money (as legal tender and as grace), redemption, and the permanent disputation of the ignominious Apostle, Judas Iscariot. Professor Parker continues to cite Augustine and Tertullian ("I linger on these passages from Tertullian...") (90), for allusions to pain, punishment, and the remission of sin, and moves forward to the economy of exchange (coins as offertory) in the Mass of the early 16th Century. Remarkably, the Professor's keen ear for drollness provides one of the more revealing utterances of the combative Luther: "We have seen Antichrist" remarked Luther contemptuously at dinner, "how he spreads his money around" (92). Parker's discussions of Luther are multifarious, but not complicated, and never meandering. The innumerable accounts of Luther are revealing and always sustain a larger discussion of (for instance) the Augustinians or Gerhoch. By chapter's end we have a glimpse of the extraordinary friar (himself, an accused surrogate of Antichrist) (45) without being consumed by his wrath. In other words, there is a significant Luther case study: quotes, analysis, and histrionics, but no tour de force, wisely. The book remains, predominantly, a story--an inference--of faith and aesthetics, not radical polemics.
Parker presses on in Chapter 2 with a technologically inclined discussion of oblation. His description of the design and fabrication of the Eucharist as "transmogrification," is enthralling: "the new wafers were not baked so much as minted, pressed into the shape of coins by the curiously named "singing irons" (117), but his six part segment on The Drama of the Sacraments is, essentially, a rehabilitation of the unfathomable Judas: "He [Judas] acted, so to speak, as the messiah's messiah" (109). Parker's reclamation of the miscreant Apostle is a sober scriptural and dramatic interrogation (the kiss, the lips, the act, the shekels, the handing over...) (109+), but his reading (for example) of Augustine (on Judas) tends to subvert Augustine's derision: "Augustine's exaltation of Judas exemplifies his appreciation for heretics for two reasons..." (108). "Exaltation of Judas" and "appreciation for heretics" is an aggrandizement of the enigmatic Augustine, not a serious construal. Perhaps Professor Parker is reaching.
Otherwise, Professor Parker offers more beguiling church history in this segment. The minutiae of these findings are sublime, and well- worth underscoring, as are intriguing details in Professor Parker's essay, The Miracle at Croxton. Professor Parker culls magnanimous scholarship (Benedicta Ward, David Lawton, Mary Douglas, Marc Shell, Richard Seaford, Andrew Sofer, to name a few) to substantiate points on "counter miracles," "anti-miracles," "host- miracles," and the "fictiveness" of the Eucharist in performance context, and segues into a discussion of the mercantile attributes of the Liturgy in the "so-called" Croxton, Play of the Sacrament (126). Parker's diminutive histories are manifold, and in a segment on exchange systems present an unusual and illuminating argot: "leather coinage issued by Frederick II"; "Medieval monetary instruments"; "mereaux--a token coinage"; "charity tokens"; "'the first widely circulating publications [coins] in history'"; "pelanos (a kind of cake)"; and, at fragment's end, an arresting and shockingly beautiful descriptor for ageless Jew and Gentile hostilities: "'torturing' the host" (131).
Chapter 3: Vicarious Criminal, Christ as Representative, unpacks attention-grabbing ideas, a number of which are metaphorical, if uncontained: Christ as Robin Hood; the Resurrection as jailbreak; the Cross as mousetrap (an Augustine depiction, (173+), but the chapter is chiefly an exposition of the emergence of The Septuagint. Professor Parker begins his investigation with an historical overview of the venerable library at Alexandria, and proceeds with an explication of the library's driven patron, "Ptolemy II Philadelphus" (139). Parker explains that Ptolemy's preoccupation for gathering, commissioning, archiving, translation, transcription and variant aspects of antiquarian library science was not only an end to "produce[ing] an all-surpassing collection [...]," but, also, substantiating his cosmic franchise: "To partisans of Philadelphus, the collection at Alexandria offered the best possible means of reflecting, if such a thing were possible, his unparalleled sovereignty" (140). The recompense of this segment is a full sound-out of a seminal document in western letters: "Thus there came into Greek a replica of the Bible allegedly composed with such exactitude that among Christians in particular it eventually displaced the Hebrew [...]" (142).
Further discussion of The Septuagint in Christ and Vicarious Substitution brings Professor Parker to the conclusion that although there are a "plethora" of "Greek translations and Latin renderings," "numbing in their variety..." (152, 153), there was never a remote possibility that an agreeable version of the scriptures could pass muster with the Bible cognoscenti--Greek, Jewish, or otherwise. That is, the idea of a "utopian original" (146) is as unobtainable as it is impolitic: "Among other things it confirms that for the better part of Christian history--all of it that we've experienced so far-- there has been no single, authentic Bible [...]" (153).
Chapter 4, illusively titled, The Curious Sovereignty of Art, begins with a discussion of the writings and activities of Puritan zealot and Marlowe classmate, Thomas Beard, and narrows to an assessment of Beard's doggerel: the redundantly titled, Antichrist the Pope of Rome, and the arch-condemning and unempirical, The Theater of God's Judgments. Beard's attitude and disposition for the Catholic Mass and its conjunction with satanic performance is made evident in Professor Parker's interrogation, and with an end to indicting Beard (for, de facto, indicting Marlowe) as a surrogate of Antichrist. Professor Parker's comments and citation are skewering: "But see what a hooke the Lord put in the nosthrils of the barking dogge [...]," Beard writes, with no small delight, of Marlowe's gruesome demise" (191). The "barking dogge" axiom is dehumanizing and apropos to the treacherous Beard, but the "hooke" metaphor is bestial and torturous. Professor Parker is right to underline Beard's craven rhetoric as it shows the breadth of his duplicity. Also, the above reference puts Beard in his rightful place in Cambrian letters as revisionist, instigator, and (hyperbolically) sadist. Thanks to this unqualified account of the Beard-Marlowe-Antichrist instigation the reader will appreciate this bogus reformer for his strange admixture of vocations: King's shill, amateur dramatist, and inquisitor. As mentioned earlier in this review, Professor Parker's diminutive biographies are a matchless asset of this book.
Professor Parker's writing affects a caustic tone in various places in the book which is off-putting and casts reservations about his earnestness. Here are a few examples: "Some lovers of the cross love everything condemned. They really do love their enemies" (6); "there will be earthquakes, famine, pestilence, fearful sights and great sights from Heaven. [In other words] the worse things get, the better" (9); and further: "Stubborn Jews" (29); and, finally: "Some fundamental light about Jesus' career (my emphasis) come to light in this passage [...]" (28). A question hangs here: Does Professor Parker mean "career" as in career trajectory, or career as in epic ministry? And would Professor Parker use such a pedestrian turn of phrase when referring to Allah or Buddha? Also, Professor Parker's acerbic tone (a running commentary of sorts, with a subjective slant) undermines his credibility. That is, it's one thing for a dutiful academic to identify perceived religious anathema and doctrinal absurdity; it's another to satirize these things. My final concern again pertains to style and format. Because of the Professor's characteristically impenetrable language, and the absence of a Works Cited/Works Consulted [3], The Aesthetics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe, is an audacious personal essay more than a thesis.
-------- NOTES: 1. The familiar Latin spelling is Gerhoh, but for coherence I defer to Professor Parker's use of the German form: Gerhoch.
2. For more on levitation and conjuring in the Catholic Mass, see Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's Macbeth, by Garry Wills, Oxford University Press, 1995.
3. Professor Parker relies on a list of Abbreviations for scriptural citations and foremost texts, which is useful, but not thorough.