『제 2 목동극』의 희극관

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the unique comic form of the Second Shepherds’ Play which is the unique synthesis of God’s vision and human comedy. The play is the best known extant example of the mystery plays that made up the Wakefield cycle (or Townely cycle) which was written by one unknown dramatist. This cycle of religious dramas was presented on Corpus Christi Day in Wakefield during the time of the Middle Ages. The quality common to all comedy, from the time of Aristophanes to the present, is the comic view of life. This view of experience celebrates humankind's capacity to endure. All great comic characters celebrate the forces of life. The characters in The Second Shepherds’ Play, under the intervention of God, reveal the will to survive, no matter how miserable they are. The play concerns itself with three shepherds (suggesting the three wise men at Bethlehem), discouraged with misery and poverty, who become witnesses of the most significant event in earthly history. The paper examines the structure of the play which are divided into two parts: the story of the shepherds and the story of the infant Saviour. The first part of the drama deals with the experiences of the shepherds, particularly with the conniving sheep-stealer Mak and his wife Gill. The second part of the play involves the shepherds in gift-giving. There is another connection between the two plots as the story of Mak is a form of secular parody of the nativity. The cradle contains not the Lamb of God but a real sheep. This juxtaposition of the two parts explains how the anonymous Wakefield master utilizes a highly sophisticated system of metaphysics to infuse religious feeling and meaning into individual aspirations. The author demonstrates his intention of writing the play as social protest on one hand, in order to establish social order, and on the other, to engage these poor common lower people to become inflamed by the call from the Saviour: the promise of salvation from man’s depravity. He has infused the nativity into a pedestrian comedy and then transferred the playful secularization of the Christmas story to a serious conclusion. The design of The Second Shepherds’ Play is comic, portraying the reconciliation of all creation with its benevolent Creator. For the Wakefield master the Holy spirit and the comic are the same. Since God’s vision of history is comic, God’s Creation is a comedy of loss and restoration, like paradise lost and regained.