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THE BOOK OF JONAH AS A SOURCE FOR DRAMA
IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING THEATER

iv a

By

C / /

George w. Ralph

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partiai fuifillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Theatre

1981

© Copyright by
George Wiedmayer Ra1ph
1981

ABSTRACT

THE BOOK OF JONAH AS A SOURCE FOR DRAMA
IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING THEATER

By
George w. Ralph

This dissertation investigates the manner in which playwrights in
the English-speaking theater have adapted the Biblical book of Jonah for
the stage. The dramas are arranged typologically, according to the
dramatist's purpose and primary method of adaptation. The categorizations,
however, are not mutually exclusive; and following an historical survey
of the appearance of the character Jonah on the English-speaking stage,
each play is considered individually in terms of its distinctive dramaturgy.

While the prophet Jonah appeared briefly as part of the "Procession
of the Prophets" in at least two of the medieval cycle plays, the earliest
extant full dramatization of the Old Testament book is Lodge and Greene's
A Looking-Glass fbr London and England in the Tate Sixteenth century.
Aside from a lost "Jonah" play of the seventeenth century, only two fur—
ther dramatizations are known before the twentieth century. Both are
dramatic poems, not intended for the stage, from the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries respectively. Between 1920 and 1980 some forty
"Jonah" plays appeared.

The popularity of Jonah in the twentieth century, a phenomenon not
confined to the drama but evident in other literary and cultural forms of
expression, suggests that this alternately comic and heroic figure who
first rebels and then accepts responsibility in the face of ridiculous
odds and even yet is not content with the course of events has been found

peculiarly suited to the modern temperament.

Eleven of the "Jonah" dramas endeavor simply to retell the story,
with little comment or interpretation. Three of the plays offer par-
ticular interpretations of the Biblical work. Laurence Housman's The
Burden of'Nineveh, for example, offers rational explanations of the
"miracles." Nine plays are primarily didactic in intent, with emphasis
on one or more moral lessons drawn for the edification of the contem-
porary reader or audience. Seven essentially comic "Jonah" plays,
including three versions by Scottish playwright James Bridie, appeared
between 1920 and 1950. They range from the purely farcical to the
ironic. Wolf Mankowitz's It Should Happen to a Dog, in a Yiddish hu-
morous tradition, exploits a view of the prophet as shZemieZ. Six plays
are "adaptive" in nature, the Jonah story serving the dramatist as a
vehicle for commentary on contemporary society. Thematic interest and
focus are drawn from sources outside the Biblical. The English adapta-
tion by George White of Guenter Rutenborn's The Sign of'Jonah explores
dialectical relationships between Biblical and contemporary characters
and between stage and audience. Olov Hartman's Prophet and Carpenter,
the only other play in English translation among those studied, is the
single example of a liturgical "Jonah" drama.

As models for the dramatization of Biblical subjects, the "Jonah"
plays represent a wide variety of dramaturgic methods. The "story-

interpretive,

telling, and didactic approaches appear on the whole to
produce little of dramatic or theatrical worth. The major exception in
the "story-telling" category is Madeleine L'Engle's The Journey with
Jonah, presenting the narrative in a fresh and entertaining fashion for
children. In the didactic class, the theatrical effectiveness of the
Lodge and Greene play and of David Campton's Jonah is the result of

dramaturgic skill independent of the ”lessons" imparted. The comic

 

dramas succeed in realizing what much contemporary scholarship under-
stands as the tone and purpose of the Biblical source. "Adaptive"
dramatizations create audience interest through the integration of
contemporary ideas and issues with a familiar ancient story. Hartman's
play illustrates the effective use of Biblical literature in a liturgical

dramatic form.

It is considerably more than cliche to state that this study
would be unlikely to have reached completion had it not been
for the assistance and support of

Kay Hubbard

to whom the work is dedicated

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express appreciation in particular to Carol Lynn Juth-
Gavasso, Assistant Professor of Library Science at Hope College in
Holland, Michigan, and Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell, formerly Honorary
Librarian for the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain. Both
librarians were of invaluable assistance in locating published and
unpublished playscripts as well as other hard-to-find materials.

Several of the playwrights were kind enough to make available copies of
their manuscripts and to furnish information concerning the production‘
of their plays. For such assistance I am especially grateful to Laurence
M. Manley, Lawrence H. Maddy, John J. Debrecini, and Marion Fairman. I
am indebted to Jean Joss, Administrative Assistant for A. Nheaton and
Company in Exeter, for preparing a photocopy of the out-of—print Jo
Jonah. Martha Orrick, with whom I have enjoyed a long though sporadic
relationship through our mutual interest in religion and theater, called
to my attention some significant sources regarding Jonah as mythic
archetype. Friend and colleague Charles A. Huttar, Professor of English
at Hope College, alerted me periodically to "Jonah“ treatments in art "
and literature which he encountered in the course of his own research in
literary and artistic uses of the Bible. Provost David G. Marker has
supported this work from start to finish, and I am especially indebted
to him and to Dean Jacob E. Nyenhuis for providing released time from
certain academic duties in order that the project might be satisfac-
torily concluded. My colleagues in the Hope College Department of
Theatre graciously assumed various burdens which my involvement in the
research and writing of the dissertation created for the department.

Kay Hubbard not only typed the entire manuscript in its several drafts,
but also served as an editorial consultant. My debt to Ms. Hubbard for
her many helpful suggestions and her unflagging moral support is less
than adequately recognized in the dedication.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter
ONE. JONAH ON THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING STAGE

THO. STORY-TELLING TREATMENTS OF JONAH .

THREE. INTERPRETIVE TREATMENTS OF JONAH

FOUR. DIDACTIC TREATMENTS OF JONAH

FIVE. COMIC TREATMENTS OF JONAH

SIX. ADAPTIVE TREATMENTS OF JONAH .

SEVEN. LITURGICAL TREATMENT OF JONAH

EIGHT. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Page

27
57
70
115
136
179
188
198

Introduction

Biblical themes have inspired dramatic performances from the
Middle Ages to the Baroque period. The subject was suppressed by
the Protestant Reformers or went out of fashion in the Enlighten-
ment. The reappearance of the theme in modern drama is a subject
of great interest which so far has not found adequate treatment.
So stated a panel reviewing a doctoral dissertation submitted to the
Sophia University of Tokyo in 1977.1 My own interest in Biblical lit-
erature as a source for drama has grown through five years of directing
and fourteen years of teaching in the area of religious drama. The
dearth of scholarly work in this field has provided a primary impetus for
the present study. The current scholarly interest in the dramatist's
exploitation of classical mythology has not been matched by a similar
enthusiasm for the playwright's use of Judaeo-Christian mythic material.2
And yet, as is emphasized in the above quotation, Biblically-inspired
drama has also been of significance in the history of our theater.

It is the purpose of the present study to explore the ways in which

a variety of dramatists have adapted for the stage a single Old Testament

 

1 Marie Philomena de los Reyes, SPC, The Biblical Theme in Modern
[huma (Quezon City, Philippines: University of the Philippines, 1978),
p. vii.

2 The classical influence has been notable in, but certainly not
restricted to, the French and German theater traditions. Major contem-
Porary studies of this subject include Kate Hamburger, From Sophocles to
Sartre: Figures from Greek Tragedy, Classical and Modern, trans. Helen
Sebba (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1969); Angela Belli, Ancient Greek

Myths and Modern Drama: A Study in Continuity (New York: New York

("11 versity and London: University of London, 1969); Hugh Dickinson, Myth
CW2 ‘the Modern Stage (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1969); Richmond
Y: Hathorn, Tragedy, Myth and Mystery (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer-
$1 ty, 1962); Leo Aylen, Greek Tragedy and the Modern World (London:
Mfithuen, 1964).

 

 

 

.
in
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2
legend, that recounted in the book of Jonah. With two exceptions, the
dramas to be considered have originated in the English-speaking theater,
either in Great Britain or in the United States. Guenter Rutenborn's The
Sign of’Jonah, written and first performed in German, proved to have
great appeal to religious drama enthusiasts in this country. Among
theologian-critics who felt the production of Rutenborn's play to have
made an important contribution to the tradition of religious drama in the
United States was Tom F. Driver. Driver regarded The Sign of'Jonah as
setting the norm for a distinctively Protestant dramaturgy. Furthermore,
the English version of the play by George White is actually an adapta-
tion, for off-Broadway, and as such perhaps may be considered to some
extent an English "original." In addition, Olov Hartman's Prophet and
carpenter, in a translation from the Swedish by Brita Stendahl, will be
examined as representing the only development of the Jonah theme for the
purpose of a liturgical drama.

The English medieval Biblical drama has, of course, reCeived con-
siderable scholarly attention. Otherwise, critical material relating
directly to the present study, particularly for the modern period, is
relatively scarce. Robert Speaight's Christian Theatre remains the
standard historical survey of Judaeo-Christian traditions in the the-
ater.3 The work is brief, and the author does not offer criticism of
Biblical drama. William V. Spanos' The Christian Tradition in Modern

.Rritdsh verse Drama offers detailed analyses of twentieth-century British

3 Robert Speaight, Christian Theatre, Henri Daniel-Raps, ed., The
llveernfieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, vol. 124 (New York:
Haw thorn , 1960) .

 

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3

dramatists dealing in verse with religious themes.4 None of the “Jonah“
dramatists, however, comes within this purview. Prabodh Chandra Ghosh in
Poetry and.Religion in Drama is concerned with a variety of dramatists
who write in a Christian tradition or who deal with Christian subjects or
themes.5 Maria Philoméne de los Reyes in The Biblical Theme in Modern
Drama studies twelve plays based on Scripture, but none dealing with
Jonah.6

Five recent studies in British drama touch on the subject of the
present study. Two works, Ruth H. Blackburn's Biblical Drama under the
Tudors and Lily B. Campbell's Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-
Century England provide an analysis of Biblical subjects and motifs which
is generally lacking for later periods of theater history.7 Lodge and
Greene's A Looking-Glass for London and England is one of the four Tudor
plays studied in Naomi E. Pasachoff's Playwrights, Preachers, and Poli-
ticians.8 Gerald Weales' Religion in Modern English Drama examines the
influence of religion in the theater in England from the late nineteenth

to the mid-twentieth century.9 Weales is primarily concerned with

 

4 William V. Spanos, The Christian Tradition in Modern British
verse Drama: The Poetics of’Sacramental Time (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University, 1967).

5 Prabodh Chandra Ghosh, Poetry and Religion in Drama (Calcutta:
World, 1974).

5 Reyes.

7 Ruth H. Blackburn, Biblical Drama under the Tudors (The Hague and
Paris: Mouton, 1971); Lily B. Campbell, Divine Poetry and Drama in
Sixteenth—century England (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1959;
New'York: Gordian, 1972).

8 Naomi E. Pasachoff, Playwrights, Preachers, and Politicians: A
Stbaiy of'Four Tudor Old Testament Dramas, James Hogg, ed., Elizabethan
anci Renaissance Studies, no. 45 (Salzburg: Institut fUr Englische
SP'"ElChe und Literatur, Universitat Salzburg, 1975).

- 9 Gerald Weales, Religion in Modern English Drama (Philadelphia:
“"1 Versity of Pennsylvania, 1961).

4
doctrinal and theological themes in the drama, and consequently does not
devote much attention to Scriptural adaptation. He does not limit him-
self, as does Spanos, to verse dramatists, and his work contains a brief
discussion of James Bridie's "Jonah" plays and a reference to Laurence
Housman's The Burden of Nineveh. Murray Roston's Biblical Drama in
England studies methods of adapting Biblical material for the stage.10
He stresses the influence of a period's culture and mores on the assump-
tions governing dramatic adaptation. While not offering exhaustive
criticisms, Roston treats the "Jonah" plays of Lodge and Greene, A. P.
Herbert, James Bridie, and Laurence Housman. Other works in the area of
religion and theater, such as those of W. Moelwyn Merchant, Kay M.
Baxter, Ernest Ferlita, Jerome Ellison, John Van Zanten, Richard E.
Sherrell, Alfred R. Edyvean, Nelvin Vos, and Nathan A. Scott, Jr., relate
theological motifs to themes in both "religious" and "secular“ drama, but
without dealing in depth with the matter of Biblical adaptation.11

Of work in the broader field of religion and literature, the studies
of James S. Ackerman, Thayer S. Warshaw, Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis, and

their colleagues at Indiana University's Institute on Teaching the Bible

 

10 Murray Roston, Biblical Drama in England, From the Middle Ages
to the Present Day (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, 1968).

11 W. Moelwyn Merchant, Creed and Drama: An Essay in Religious
Drama (London: S.P.C.K., 1965); Kay M. Baxter, Speak What we Feel
(London: Student Christian Movement, 1964); Ernest Ferlita, The Theatre
czf Pilgrimage (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1971); Jerome Ellison, God on
Zhuoadmay (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1971); John Van Zanten, Caught in the
Act: Modern Drama as Prelude to the Gospel (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1971); Richard E. Sherrell, The Human Image: Avant-Garde and Christian
(R'i chmond, VA: John Knox, 1965); Alfred R. Edyvean, This Dramatic World:
”Sing Contemporary Drama in the Church (New York: Friendship, 1970);
Ne 7 Vin Yes, The Great Pendulum of Becoming: Images in Modern Drama
(Washington, D.C.: Christian University, 1980); Nathan A. Scott, Jr.,
9d- a Man in the Modern Theatre (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1965).

 

5
in Secondary English has the closest relevance to my own research. The
Institute has been concerned with the study of the Bible as literature,
with the study of modern literature directly employing Biblical sources,
and with the study of modern literature containing thematic parallels to
Biblical writings. The first two of these areas are pertinent to an
analysis of "Jonah" drama. Publications by Institute authors provide
extensive coverage of Old Testament material, including treatment of the
book of Jonah as literature and as literary source.

Jonah seems to me a particularly timely choice for a study such as
this. Although there have been in the English-speaking theater a few
earlier dramatizations of the story, notably Thomas Lodge and Robert
Greene's A Looking-Glass for London and England in the late sixteenth
century, the subject appears to have become especially popular in the
most recent decades of the present century. The "Jonah" dramas available
for analysis represent both professional and non-professional theatrical
production. And because these plays present a broad range in style,
intent, and manner and degree of adaptation, their study can offer insight
more generally into the dramatization of Scriptural material.

In this study the "Jonah" plays are arranged typologically. Since
the playwright's primary purpose in dramatizing the book of Jonah will
determine the type of adaptation, I have categorized the plays on this
basis. The groupings cannot be considered absolute or mutually exclu-
sive, as certain plays share some of the characteristics of more than one

ta/pe. The categorization or typing, nevertheless, will serve to delin-
eate major differences in dramatic treatments of the Biblical source. At

times same time, each drama within a given group will be analyzed separately

Oba-
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6
in order that the playwright's approach be revealed in its distinctiveness
and not simply assumed to follow a particular pattern.
Following a brief chronological account of known "Jonah" plays in
English, six typological groupings are discussed in turn, and some
attention given to each of the dramas in each group. The "story-telling”
treatments of Jonah endeavor essentially to relate the Biblical account
without interpretive or extra-Biblical thematic additions. Though the
playwrights in this group tend to follow the plot strictly as narrated in
the source, they may employ contemporary dress or language or other
elements of a more contemporary style. The "interpretive" treatments
seek to suggest the meaning or significance of the book of Jonah in terms
of its own period and setting. The didactic versions attempt to draw
from the story a moral lesson applicable to the dramatist's own time and
a¢jdressed to a contemporary audience. Basically comic treatments of the
bcaok of Jonah range from the humorous and ironical to the purely farci-
ceal. The "adaptive" dramatizations employ the Biblical source as a
veeriicle for the author's own point of view. The Jonah narrative provides
only the occasion, and is otherwise incidental to the theme of the drama.
F 'i nally, Hartman's Prophet and Carpenter demonstrates the use of Jonah in
a 1 iturgical play. A short concluding chapter will suggest the impli-
ca ti ons of the variety of "Jonah" dramatizations for Biblical drama in
genera].12
\
Wh‘i ch12 In The Biblical Theme in Modern Drama Reyes implies a typology
" Ex earliefiiétitieéifiiicii iflitil‘plfiiefliAlifiéuiiiii'beifieflfirtfifli'éte'”
CIYTEBJTEatists who add to the Biblical characters a psychological believa-
b‘ 1 'i ty, those who employ a Biblical source as a vehicle for presenting
1:"‘?'il“ own ideas or ideologies, and those who employ Biblical material to
brj n

1 ‘i f 9 into a unity of experience an historical incident and contemporary
‘3. Later in her book she discusses Biblical drama as interpretive

 

of the source material, as well as "comedy with Biblical dimension."
Her final chapter, "Structural Metamorphosis in Dramatic Art--Biblical
Themes as Mythopoeic Designs," employs Northrop Frye's notion of "dis-
placement" in which "the events comprising the plot of the biblical
archetype have been displaced by events occurring in our times." The
chapter is of particular interest with respect to my classification of
"Jonah“ dramas as "adaptive."

CHAPTER ONE

Jonah on the English-speaking Stage

The first appearance of Jonah on the English stage was inauspicious.

Though records indicate the performance of a medieval French "Jonah"

play, none existed in England.1 The Biblical prophet appears in only two
of the extant cycle plays. In these he takes the stage to deliver a
single speech as part of the "Procession of the Prophets." All of the
prophetic utterances in this "Procession" relate to the coming Christ.
Jonah alone among these prophets makes reference to Christ's descent into
hell where he is to remain for three days before ascending. The parallel
is of course with Jonah's own three-day incarceration in the belly of a
fish before emerging alive once more onto dry land.

In the Ludus Coventriae "Procession" the prophets alternate with Old
Testament kings in delivering prophecies concerning the coming messiah.
Jonah is twelfth of the twenty-seven speakers. His four lines directly
foretell the resurrection experience of the Christ. I

I, Jonas, sey that on the iij.de morn

ffro dethe he xal ryse, this is a trewe talle,

Fyguryd in he, the whiche longe beforn
Lay iij. days beryed within the qwalle.2

 

1 Hardin Craig cites a "Jonah" drama as one among several on Old
Testament subjects performed in France during the middle ages. Craig,
English.Religious Drama of’the Middle Ages (London: Oxford University,
1955 , p. 111.

2 James Orchard Halliwell, ed., Ludus Coventriae: A Collection of
Mysteries, Formerly Represented at vaentry on the Feast of Corpus
Christi (London: The Shakespeare Society, 1841). p. 67. Slight spelling
variants in the text will be found in K. S. Block, ed., Ludus Coventriae
or The Play called Corpus Christi (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford
University, published for The Early English Text Society, 1922), pp. 59-
60. It is now considered unlikely that this cycle, also referred to as
"Hegge" and "N. towne," was performed at Coventry.

8

 

9

The "Procession of the Prophets" has been combined in the Chester cycle
with the dramatic sequences concerning the Ten Commandments and Balaam
and Balak. In the Prophets portion of the play Jonah appears as the
fourth of only seven prophets, whose speeches are separated by explan-
atory comments delivered by an Expositor. Jonah is assigned eight lines,
prefaced by the recitation of the Latin text of Jonah 2:2. Jonah recites

his own experience, and it is the Expositor who relates that experience

to the Christ.

JONAS: Clamavi de tribulatione mea ad Dominum et exaudivit; de
ventre inferi clamavi et exaudisti vocem meam et proiecisti
me.

I, Jonas, in full great any

To God I prayed inwardlye,

And he me hard through his mercy,
And on me did his grace.

In middes the sea cast was I,

For I wrought inobedientlye.

But in a whalles bellye

Three dayes saved I was.

EXPOSITOR: Lordinges, what this may signifye
Christ expoundes apertelye,
As we reade in the Evangely
That Christ himself can saye:
Right as Jonas was dayes three
In wombe of whall, so shall He be
In earth lyinge, as was he,
And rise the third daye.4

 

3 "I called to the Lord, out of my distress,/and he answered
me;/out of the belly of Sheol I cried,/and thou didst hear my voice."
Jonah 2:2, Revised Standard Version.

4 David Bevington, Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975),
p. 351. "Because of textual uncertainties, some scholars decline to view
the "Procession" as properly part of the Cappers' play in the Chester
text. Lumiansky and Mills have not included it with the Ten Commandments
and Balaam material, but have published it as an appendix to the text.
Bevington agrees that, as the prophets episode appears in only one of
the five available Chester manuscripts, it should be regarded as a late
addition. Bevington, p. 337. For slight textual variants see R. M.
Lumiansky and David Mills, eds., The Chester Mystery Cycle (London, New
York, Toronto: Oxford University, published for The Early English Text
Society, 1974), vol. 1, p. 478.

 

10

Robert A. Brawer calls attention to the particularly wooden quality
of the prophets in the cycles which employ the "Procession."

It is essentially a string of dramatic recitals rather than a

dramatic action, since it consists of a series of impersonations of

prophets whose function it is to exposit future events to be

enacted in the cycle . . . Thus the procession of the prophets

differs fundamentally from the cycle play's more complex dramati-

zations, most of which imitate rather than foretell events and

which create and develop characters who cgmmunicate with each other

rather than merely address the spectator.
This characteristic of the "Procession" material in the cycles, according
to Brawer, reflects ". . . their adoption of the ceremonial, formalized
manner of representation characteristic of the liturgical drama."6

A second cardinal feature of the ”Procession" prophets is their
exclusive role as harbingers of Christ. In the case of Jonah, the
prophet not only foretells but also prefigures the coming messiah. As
Erich Auerbach points out, in both homiletic literature and theological
treatise during the period figural interpretation was common practice.7
In preaching and in Biblical commentary Jonah was characteristically

viewed as a type of Christ.8 Although the most significant literary

 

5 Robert A. Brawer, "The Form and Function of the Prophetic Pro-
cession in the Middle English Cycle Play," Annuale Medieval 13 (1972),
p. 88.

6 Ibid., p. 105.

7 "At a very early date profane and pagan material was . . . inter-
preted figurally; Gregory of Tours, for example, uses the legend of the
Seven Sleepers as a figure for the Resurrection: the waking of Lazarus
from the dead and Jonah's rescue from the belly of the whale were also
commonly interpreted in this sense." Erich Auerbach, "Figura," trans.
Ralph Manheim, in Auerbach, Scenes from the Drama of European Literature
(Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973), pp. 63-64.

3 A discussion of medieval commentators on the book of Jonah will
be found in F. N. M. Diekstra, "Jonah and Patience: The Psychology of a
Prophet," English Studies 55:3 (June, 1974), pp. 212-214; and in D.
E. Hart-Davies, Jonah: Prophet and Patriot (London: Charles J. Thynne
and Jarvis, 1925), pp. 20-22.

11
treatment of Jonah up to this time, the homiletic poem Patience by the"
anonymous "Gawain-poet," does not stress the typological significance of
the prophetic book, Malcolm Andrew notes in this work Jonah's ". . . three
days in the whale as a type of Christ's three days in hell."9 In the
sacred art of the period one also sees Jonah as a type of the Christ.
The prevailing theme is of death, burial, descent into hell, and resur-

rection. Hans Walter Wolff describes this "Jonah" motif in church

 

9 Malcolm Andrew, "Patience: The 'Munster Dor,'" English Language
Notes 14:3 (March, 1977), p. 165. See also W. Michael Grant, "Comedy,
Irony, and, Compassion in Patience," West Virginia University Philological
Papers 20 (1973), p. 10. Patience, as the title suggests, is an apology
for this particular virtue among those enumerated in the Beatitudes,
with Jonah exemplifying the lack of the virtue. The poem is available
in several editions. Recommended are J. J. Anderson, ed., Patience
(Manchester: Manchester University and New York: Barnes and Noble.

1969); and Margaret Williams, R.S.C.J., trans., The Pearl-Poet: His
Complete works (New York: Random House, 1967). Ordelle G. Hill identifies
the approach of the Patience poet as tropological, an approach containing
the seeds of a satirical, comic treatment. Hill, "The Audience of
Patience," Modern Philology 66:2 (November, 1968), P. 106. See Beryl
Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Second Edition
(London: Oxford University, 1952), pp. 244-245. Relevant critical
commentary on Patience will be found in Hill, pp. 103-109; Grant, PD. 8-
16; Diekstra, pp. 205-217; A. C. Spearing, "Patience and the Gawain-
Poet," Anglia 84 (1966), pp. 305-329, reprinted with slight expansion in
Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
1970). pp. 74-94; Charles Moorman, "The Role of the Narrator in Patience,"
Mbdern Philology 61:2 (November, 1963), pp. 90-95; Lynn Staley Johnson,
"Patience and the Poet's Use of Psalm 93," Modern Philology 74:1 (August,
1976). pp. 67-71; Jay Schleusener, "History and Action in Patience,"

pm 86:5 (October, 1971). pp. 959-965; James R. Hulbert, "A Hypothesis
Concerning the Alliterative Revival,” Modern Philology 20 (1931), pp. 405-
422; and Ordelle G. Hill, "The Late-Latin De Jonah as a Source for
Patience," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 66 (1967), pp. 21-
25. On the medieval "Jonah" poems see, in addition to Hill's article on
the pseudo-Tertulli an Carmen de Jonah Propheta, her "The Audience of
Patience," pp. 103-109. David Bevington, stressing the pervasiveness of
a "patience" tradition connected with Jonah, suggests that Lodge and
Greene's A Looking-Glass for London and England is an argument for
patience as opposed to rebellion even when government is oppressive and
unjust. The play is thus ". . . orthodox in its disapproval of lower-
class restiveness; the commons are, in a conventional metaphor, the

'feet' of the commonwealth, and when they rebel against their head 'The
city's state will fall and be forlorn' . . ." Bevington, Tudor Drama

and Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1968), pp. 235-236.
Bevington's thesis is not typical. Other interpretations of A Looking-
Glass are discussed in chapter four, pp. 76-83.

 

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12
sarcophagus engravings dating from the third century and on "whale-
pulpit” carvings from the twelfth century and later.10 Certain examples
of liturgical art, furthermore, appear to have a direct relationship to
the "Procession of the Prophets." M. D. Anderson points out that all but
the last two of the kings and prophets of the Ludus coventriae "Pro-
cession" are depicted in the "Jesse tree" window presently located at St.
Mary's Church in Shrewsbury.11
The course of development, and even the exact origin, of the "Pro-

cession of the Prophets" is subject to some dispute. But it is generally
agreed that it was derived directly or indirectly from the late fifth- or

early sixth-century pseudo-Augustianian sermon Sermo contra Judaeos,

Paganos, et Arianos de Symbolo.12 This sermon does not include Jonah

 

10 Hans Walter Wolff, "Jonah--The Messenger Who Obeyed," trans.
Elisabeth Kohl and Rod Hutton, Currents in Theology and.Mission 3:2
(April, 1976), pp. 88—89. On both the popularity and the figural inter-
pretation of Jonah in early Christian art see Hart-Davies, pp. 20-22;
George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford
University, 1958), pp. 38-39; Cyril C. Richardson, "The Foundations of
Christian Symbolism," in F. Ernest Johnson, ed., Religious Symbolism
(New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies, 1955), p. 8.
Reproductions of third- and fourth-century "Jonah" art will be found in
Elias Bickerman, Four Strange Books of the Bible (New York: Schocken,
1967), pp. 5-8. On the persistence of the salvation theme in "Jonah"
art of the sixteenth century see J. Richard Judson, “Marine Symbols of
Salvation in the Sixteenth Century," Marsyas: Studies in the History of
Art, Supplement 1 (1964), pp. 136-155. An interesting revival of the
major early "Jonah" motifs can be seen in a print by Fritz Eichenberg,
reproduced in The Catholic worker 43:7 (September, 1977), p. 1.

11 M[ary] D. Anderson, Drama and Image in English Medieval
Churches (London: Cambridge University, 1963 , p. 37. Anderson calls
attention to a rare appearance of Jonah among the rood screen prophets
and apostles, at Ipplepen. Anderson, p. 38.

12 Brother Linus Urban Lucken, Antichrist and the Prophets of
Antichrist in the Chester Cycle (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Uni-
versity of America, 1940). p. 78. Though concerned primarily with
Chester's "Antichrist" prophets' procession, Lucken also discusses the
"Advent" procession at some length, as does Leslie Howard Martin in his
"Comic Eschatology in the Chester Coming of'Antichrist," Comparative

13
among the prophets cited, nor does Jonah appear in the "Procession" of
the earliest recorded Latin dramas, at Laon and Limoges. The Rouen play,
however, more than doubled the number of prophets, and included Jonah.13
Anderson discusses the ordo prophetae, following the pattern of the Sermo

contra Judaeos, . as a liturgical procession of priests, imperson-
ating the Prophets, who foretold the coming of the Messiah, and which
thus served as an Advent prelude to the Christmas drama."14 Glynne
Wickham maintains that the Sermo contra Judaeos was not chanted by a
procession of priests but rather employed as a reading in the liturgy.
"The passage in this lectio chosen for dramatization was that in which
the Jews are told to call upon their Prophets to bear witness to the
coming of Christ."15 Thomas P. Campbell argues that the prophet-play did

not evolve directly from either the Sermo contra Judaeos or the priestly

ordo prophetae, which he describes as a liturgical "static procession."

 

Drama 5:3 (Fall, 1971), pp. 163-176. On the origin of the "Procession
of the Prophets" and the medieval Old Testament drama in general see, in
addition to Lucken, Hardin Craig, "The Origin of the Old Testament
Plays," Modern Philology 10:4 (April, 1913), pp. 473-487; E[dmund] K.
Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, vol. 2 (London: Oxford University, 1903),
pp. 52-56; Karl Young, The Drama of'the Medieval Church, vol. 2 (London:
Oxford University, 1933), pp. 123-171; Oscar Cargill, Drama and Liturgy
(New York: Columbia University, 1930; New York: Octagon, 1969). PD. 60-
104; Grace Frank, The Medieval French Drama (London: Oxford University,
1954). pp. 39-41, 74-84.

13 Lucken, pp. 78, 80. See also Brawer, pp. 92-93. Hardin Craig
cites later French Prophetae (Craig, p. 474). Maximilian J. Rudwin
lists fragments of three German prophet-plays from, respectively, the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Rudwin, A Historical and
Bibliographical Survey of the German Religious Drama (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh, 1924). p. 26.

14 Anderson, p. 23.

15 Glynne Wickham, The Medieval Theatre (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1974). p. 230. See also Chambers, vol. 2, p. 52.

14

Rather, he feels, the form and style of the prophet-play was influenced
more generally by liturgical form and style.16

At least three of the extant English cycles contain the "Procession
of the Prophets." The Wakefield, or Towneley, cycle does not include
Jonah. While the York cycle lacks a prophetic procession, Brawer argues
that it has simply been displaced by

. a single speaker, Prologue, who recites and explicates the

prophecies.. The form of the York dgamatization is thus a throwback

to the original Augustinian sermon.
In any case, as has already been noted, Jonah appeared as one in the
succession of prophets in only the Ludus Coventriae and the Chester
cycle. Martial Rose suggests that in the former the prophecies ". . . pre-
pare more for the advent of the Virgin than for Christ."18 Lumiansky and
Mills argue that in the Chester cycle the "Procession" was eventually
changed so as to constitute an Advent play in the New Testament sequence,

rather than remaining the concluding Old Testament drama.19 Bevington

believes the Chester "Procession" likely to have been derived from an

 

15 Thomas P. Campbell, "The Prophets' Pageant in the English
Mystery Cycles: Its Origin and Function," MLA Research opportunities in
Renaissance Drama 17 (1974), pp. 107-119.

17 Brawer, p. 115. For a discussion of the differences in treat-
ment of the prophetic material among the four cycles, see Brawer,
pp. 105-123.

18 Martial Rose, "The Staging of the Hegge Plays," in Neville
Denny, ed., Medieval Drama, Stratford-Upon-Avon Studies 16 (London:
Edward Arnold, 1973), p. 203. For a discussion of the place of the
prophet-play in the Ludus coventriae and its performance, see Kenneth
Cameron and Stanley J. Kahrl, "The N-Town Plays at Lincoln," Theatre
Notebook 20:2 (Winter, 1965/6), pp. 61-69; and the same authors' "Stag-
‘ing the N—Town Cycle," Theatre Notebook 21:3 (Spring, 1967), pp. 122-
138, and 21:4 (Sumner, 1967), pp. 152-165.

19 Lumiansky and Mills, p. xxviii.

15

earlier play based on the Apostle's Creed.20

By the sixteenth century Jonah was apparently a fairly popular
subject. According to Thomas H. Dickinson, ". . . references to Nineveh
and Jonas are frequent in the literature of the time."21 In both Henry
the Fourth, Part Two, and The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare's Falstaff
offers quotations from the book of Jonah.22 The first full-length
dramatization of the book of Jonah in English in this period appears to
have been a Jonas by Ralph Radcliffe, ca. 1519-1559. Ruth H. Blackburn
mentions the listing by John Bale of ten plays by this schoolmaster-
dramatist. Six of the dramas, including Jonas, were based on Biblical
subjects.23 William Hazlitt cites Jonas and eight other titles of
Radcliffe's plays, specifying that none was ever printed.24 Whether
Robert Greene knew of the Radcliffe version, and whether he and Thomas
Lodge had any reference to it in composing their own A Looking-Glass for

London and England, cannot be established. Hazlitt points out, however,

 

20 Bevington, Medieval Drama, p. 337.

21 Thomas H. Dickinson, ed., Robert Greene (London: T. Fisher Unwin
and New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, The Mermaid Series, n.d.), Intro-
duction, p. xlix. One of the most notable literary uses of Jonah,
though by a French rather than an English author, was in Rabelais' Quart
livre of 1552. See Alice Fiola Berry's discussion of the Jonah motif in
this work, in her "'Les Mithologies Pantagruelicques': Introduction to a
Study of Rabelais's Quart livre," PMLA 92:3 (May, 1977), pp. 473-476.

22 Cited by Edna Moore Robinson, "Shakespeare's Use of Scripture,"
in Roland Bartel, James S. Ackerman, Thayer S. Warshaw, eds., Biblical
Images in Literature (Nashville and New York: Abingdon, 1975). P. 315.

23 Blackburn, p. 65.

24 W[illiam] Carew Hazlitt, ed., A Manual for the Collector and
Abnateur of'Old.English Plays (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1892),
P. 122.

 

16

that another of Radcliffe's plays, Dives and Lazarus, was mentioned by
Greene in 1592 in his A Groatsworth of’Wit.25

Later in the century Lodge and Greene's A Looking-Glass was per-
formed in London. Though this is not likely to have been the original
production, the first performance of which we have record was at the Rose
on March 8, 1592.26 Edward Andrews Tenney documents the play's popu-
larity:

It proved to be a first attraction, for in March, April, and June,
1592, Lord Strange's men revived it four times at the Rose Theatre,
and it had the honor to be chosen for the Easter-day performance,
at which it realized the goodly sum of fifty-five shillings.27

Tenney further suggests the reasons for the play's popularity.

There are many reasons why A Looking Glasse had a strong
popular appeal. It is a comic satire directed against the vices of
London and England. It satirizes and rebukes every class. The
dissoluteness and pride of the aristocracy and the Court are
luridly set forth in the plot of Rasni, King of Nineveh, and his
debauched followers. The corruption and greed of the middle class
are exposed by the satire on the usurer, the lawyer, and the judge;
and the drunkenness and immorality of the lower class are rebuked
in the clown and in the wife of the blacksmith. In pageant-like
sequence, one spectacle of vice follows another; and after each,
the prophet Hoseas, suspended from "the heavens" in a throne,
pronounces judgment and the coming wrath of God. Finally Jonah
arrives to announce the approaching doom. Thereupon, every one
dons sackcloth and ashes in sincere repentance, and God's wrath is

 

25 Hazlitt, p. 55.

25 Waldo F. McNeir, "The Date of 'A Looking Glass for London,'"
thes and Queries 200 (July, 1955), pp. 282-283. McNeir summarizes
major arguments concerning the play's date of composition, on which see
also John Clark Jordan, Robert Greene (New York: Columbia University,
1915; New York: Octagon, 1965), pp. 177-179.

27 Edward Andrews Tenney, Thomas Lodge (London: Sidgwick and
Jackson, 1933), p. 99. Five quotations from the play are included in
Robert Allot's Englande Parnassus (London: 1600), ed. Charles Crawford
(London: Oxford University, 1913), pp. 119, 125, 179, 181, 255-257. The
fllbjects illustrated by the quotations are, respectively, "Justice."
l.echery," "Policie," "Prayer," and "Of Tempests."

17

averted. Such a play, with its cutting satire, its broad comedy,

its spectacular episodes--thunder, lightning, naked swords in the

sky, angels, devils, and Jonah cast forth upon the stage from the

belly of the whale--could hardly fail to draw a crowd. And in an

age when the dreadful intermittent plague symbolized an avenging

God, there can be no doubt that many citizens were deeply noved by

A Looking Glasse, for London and England .28
Dickinson cites the ubiquity of Jonah, the Whale, and Nineveh in puppet
shows for two decades after A Looking-Glass as further evidence of the
popularity of the Lodge and Greene play.29 Blackburn, emphasizing the
influence of.A Looking-Glass, calls attention to both the puppet drama
and ". . . 'ein comedia auss dem propheten Jonah' performed at Nordlingen
in 1505."30

Some time in the first quarter of the seventeenth century Zacharie
Boyd, a Scottish clergyman, wrote his dramatic poem The Historie of
Jonah. Hazlitt lists another seventeenth-century "Jonah" play, no longer

extant, entitled Nineveh's Repentance. "This tragi-comedy is mentioned

in the List annexed to the careless Shepherdess, 1656."31 No further

 

28 Tenney, p. 99. Critics, it should be noted, do not agree that
the play is so predominantly satirical. Critical Opinions are cited in
the discussion of.A Looking-Glass in chapter four.

29 Dickinson, p. 78. Alexander Dyce cites references to "Jonah"
puppet plays in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle,
Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of'His Humour and Bartholomew Fair, and two
other Elizabethan dramas. Dyce, ed., The Dramatic works of'Robert
Greene, vol. 1 (London: William Pickering, 1831), p. xlii.

30 Blackburn, p. 171. The German stage performance is also cited
by W. W. Greg: "A Jonah comedy performed by English players at Nord-
lingen in 1605 may have had some connexion with the present piece."
Greg, ed. , A Looking-Glass for London and England by Thomas Lodge and
Robert Greene, 1594 (London: Oxford University, for The Malone Society,
1932), p. viii. .

31 Hazlitt, p. 166. Coleman designates Nineveh's Repentance "a
llast play." Edward 0. Coleman, comp., The Bible in English Drama: An
Annotated List of Plays Including Translations from Other Languages (New
‘Y()rk: The New York Public Library, 1931). P. 77.

18

dramatizations of Jonah are recorded until late in the nineteenth cen-
tury, when John Ritchie's romantic "closet drama" The Life of'Jonah, the
Prophet was published.

What might be regarded as a revival of "Jonah" dramatic activity had
its beginnings in the second decade of the twentieth century. In 1921
A. P. Herbert's The Book of Jonah (As almost any modern Irishman would
have written it) appeared in The London Mercury. This tongue-in-cheek
commentary on the Irish temperament and British rule, though not written
for performance, may be considered the first comic treatment of Jonah.
In 1924 The Jewish Chronicle of London carried L. V. Snowman's A Second
Chapter of "Jonah," again a dramatization not intended for performance.
Snowman's short play offers an interpretation of the Biblical Jonah as
representing Israel's world mission and her reluctance to accept that
mission. Edward D. Coleman in his bibliography of Biblical drama in
English lists a play by John A. Maynard which may have been the first
"Jonah" drama published in the United States. Coleman's entry reads
simply: "Jonah; a play in five episodes. (Boston: American Unitarian
Association, n.d.)"32 Since Coleman's bibliography was published orig-
inally in 1931, it can be said with certainty only that Maynard's play
was written prior to that date.

In 1927 Harry W. Githens published A Fish Story, possibly the first
of a number of "Jonah" plays written for non-professional, church produc-
tion. Gi thens' Preface to his Dramatized Stories from the Old Testament

specifies the types of production situations he had in nfind, and his

32 Coleman, p. 77. The present writer has been unable to locate a
Copy of this play.

 

19
suggestions may serve to indicate the varied uses for which later church
"Jonah" plays have been intended.

These short, dramatized stories are suitable for use on
various occasions. They may be presented at the Bible-class lesson
hour, or at a Bible-class social, at a C. E. devotional service, at
mid-week church night, at a vesper service, at a missionary meeting,
or used for a feature in the opening worship program of the Bible
school.

They are suitable for use with a morning or evening church
service, or may be given as a Sunday evening series. They can be
effectively used by training-classes and in summer camps of young
people.33 ,

The decade of the nineteen-thirties witnessed somewhat increased
"Jonah" dramatic activity, particularly in terms of actual stage pro—
duction. In 1932 Scottish playwright James Bridie's first version of
Jonah, Jonah and the Whale, was both produced and published. The play
was directed by Anmer Hall for the Westminster Theatre in London. The
play was presented with Bridie's one-act The Amazed Evangelist for forty
performances.34 Among the actors appearing in the production were Edward
Chapman, Gillian Scaife, and Joan White.35 Bridie commented on this
production of his earliest "Jonah" play:

Anmer Hall . . . doggedly kept on presenting successes of
esteem at the Westminster Theatre, losing many thousands of pounds
in the process. One of these was my Jonah and the Whale, a little

piece with an enormous cast. The Westminster Theatre weathered it
for forty days, like the Ark but not so full.36

 

33 Harry W. Githens, Dramatized Stories from the Old Testament
(Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1927), p. 11.

34 Winifred Bannister, James Bridie and His Theatre (London:
Rockliff, 1955). pp. 84-86.

35 James Agate, "Jonah and the Whale," in Red Letter Nights: A
Survey of the Post-Elizabethan Drama in Actual Performance on the London
gtage, 1921-1943 (1944; reissued New York: Benjamin Blom, 1969). PP. 304-

()5.

35 James Bridie, One Way of.Living (London: Constable, pub. 1939),
D - 276.

 

20
Jonah and the Whale was later produced at the Tewkesbury Festival.37

In 1933 The American Mercury printed a "Jonah" play not intended for
production, Charles Lee Snider's Jonah in the Bible country. Here Jonah
and the events of his career are not portrayed, but the characters are
rather members of a men's Bible class engaged in a discussion of the
Biblical book. The "Burns Mantle Yearbook" for the 1935-36 season notes
one of San Francisco's "little theater" groups, the Wayfarers, as ". . . open-
ing its new home with a production of Robert Nathan's 'Jonah.'"38 It is
extremely doubtful that this play was an earlier version of Nathan's
Jezebel's Husband as produced in 1952. One may conjecture that the
Wayfarers rather presented an adaptation of Nathan's 1925 novel Jonah.39
Also in 1936 Hammond B. Gayfer's one-act farce The Subsequent History of
Mr. Jonah was first copyrighted. The play was published in an acting
edition in 1938, with no production information listed.

The burgeoning of "Jonah" plays continued during the nineteen-
forties. James Bridie's radio dramatization The Sign of the Prophet
Jonah was presented by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1942. In
November of the same year a revised version of his stage play Jonah and
the Whale, in which Bridie incorporated material from the radio version,

was directed by F. Sladen Smith for the Theater of the Unnamed Society in

 

37 George R. Kernodle, "England's Religious Drama Movement,"
College English 1 (Fall, 1940). p. 420.

38 Fred Johnson, "The Season in San Francisco," in Burns Mantle,
ed., The Best Plays of 1935-36 and the Year Book of the Drama in America
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936), p. 26.

39 Robert Nathan, Jonah (New York: McBride, 1925; London: Heine-
marnl, 1925). The novel was later published in the United States as Son
07’14mittai (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934), and in the same year
reissued in England with a new forward by the author. See Clarence K.

.Sau1cjelin, Robert Nathan, Sylvia E. Bowman, ed., Twayne's United States
I4Lliiltors Series, no. 148 (New York: Twayne, 1968), p. 138.

21
Manchester. Both of Bridie's 1942 "Jonah" plays were published in 1944,
with the stage version appearing under the title Jonah 3. The 1942 stage
version was revived in 1943 by a "little theater" group in Glasgow at the
Park Theatre, and in 1954 at the Pitlochry Festival lheatre.40 Winifred
Bannister notes a fourth Bridie “Jonah" dramatization, for television,
but does not record its performance date. "The television play is called
simply Jonah and keeps fairly close to the final stage version, Jonah
3."41

In 1942, which appears to have been Jonah's landmark year for the
decade, British dramatist Laurence Housman published his The Burden of
Nineveh and American Paul Goodman wrote his play Jonah. The latter was
not published until 1945; and the first performance of Jonah, with
revisions by the author, occurred in 1966. American poet Robert Frost's
dramatic poem A Masque of'Mercy appeared in 1947. Lisl Beer's comic
puppet play Jonah and the Whale, though published in 1961, was first
performed in 1949.

American novelist Robert Nathan's play on Jonah, Jezebel's Husband,
was written during 1951 and 1952, and published in 1953. The premier
performance was on August 4, 1952, at the Pocono Playhouse in Mountain-
home, Pennsylvania.42 Claude Rains appeared as Jonah in the original

production.43 Clarence K. Sandelin notes that the Nathan play failed to

 

40 Bannister, pp. 88-89.

41 Ibid., p. 88.

42 Sandelin, p. 16.

43 David James Harkness, comp., "The Bible in Fiction and Drama: A

Bi bliography with Notes," The University of Tennessee News Letter 35:6
(June, 1956), p. 6.

 

22
reach Broadway after a New England run, probably as a result of Rains
leaving the company. Unlike Nathan's other dramas, Jezebel's Husband has
been presented occasionally since the initial production. In 1963, for
example, it was popular among community theaters in the United States and
abroad.44 I

In 1956 British playwright Wolf Mankowitz's popular and much-anthologized
one-act comedy It Should Happen to a Dog Was first published. Marilyn
Matney's unproduced Jonah was probably written in the nineteen-fifties,
and Jerome Bayer's Pity for the Gourd during this decade or in the early
nineteen-sixties.

Das Zeichen des Jona, by German pastor and playwright Guenter
Rutenborn, had its premiere in 1947 in Germany where it was performed
both professionally and non-professionally.45 In May of 1957 the play
received its first production in English by students of Union Theological
Seminary, New York City, where The Sign of'Jonah was given three perform-
ances.46 Subsequently George White was granted exclusive translation
rights. The Sign of’Jonah in White's adaptation opened off-Broadway on
September 8, 1960, at the Players Theatre, and ran for fifty-three per-
formances.47 It has since been revived by church and college theater

groups.

 

44 Sandelin, p. 88.

45 Peter Bauland, The Hooded Eagle: Modern German Drama on the New
YOrk Stage (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, 1968), p. 212. "Rutenborn's
drama had approximately five hundred performances in small towns in East
Germany alone, where the troupe of players was constantly on the run so
as not to be forced to answer questions by the communist authorities."
Bauland, p. 213. See "A Pastor's Fine Play," Life (June 10, 1957), pp.
121, 123-124.

46 Bauland, p. 213; "The Sentencing of God," Time 59:19 (May 13,
1957). p. 72.

47 Bauland, p. 213.

23

The White version of The Sign of’Jonah inaugurated Jonah's most
prolific two decades on the English-speaking stage, with the nineteen-
sixties witnessing a slightly larger number of dramas than is on record
for the nineteen-seventies. In 1961 Richard McBride's From Cut the
Whale's Mouth was produced by the Bread and Wine Mission in San Fran-
cisco. In the same year Sarah Walton Miller's Jonah was published in a
collection of "dramatic features for group worship." The first perform-
ance in English of Swedish playwright Olov Hartman's liturgical drama)
Prophet and Carpenter took place at the First Prebyterian Church in
Stamford, Connecticut, in September, 1965.48 Having appeared in Swedish
in 1954, the English version was published in 1966.

During the 1965-1966 season T. J. Spencer's Jonah was produced at
the Catholic University Theatre in Washington, D.C.49 It was produced
and directed professionally by Hal Thompson at the off-Broadway theater
Stage 73, opening on September 21 and closing on October 8, 1967.50
Paul Goodman's Jonah was also produced off-Broadway, at The American
Place Theatre at St. Clements Church, for eight subscription performances
beginning February 5, 1966, and public performances from February 15

tulrough February 25. The production was directed by Lawrence Kornfeld,

and featured Sorrell Booke in the title role.51

43 Bernard Ikeler, "Jonah: Prophet and Sinner," Presbyterian Life
18: 20 (October 15, 1965). p. 49.

49 Leo Brady, "Washington,' in Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., ed., The
Best Plays of 1965-1966 (New York and Toronto: Dodd, Mead, 1966). P. 67.

50 Otis L. Guernsey, Jr. , ed., The Best Plays of 1967-1968 (New
York and Toronto: Dodd, Mead, 1968), p. 385.

51 Guernsey, The Best Plays of 1965—1966, pp. 430-431.

24
By the mid-sixties interest in the religiously-oriented musical was
growing, and for the next decade and a half Biblical material was fre-
quently the focus of such productions. In 1964 the first version of
Lawrence Waddy's Jonah, written in 1962, was produced by the BBC as part
of a Sunday evening television series entitled Meeting Point. That same
year dramatist-composer Waddy directed a stage production of his Jonah
at the Bishop's School in La Jolla, California. In 1975 he again pro-
duced Jonah, with some textual changes and expansions and a new score.52
In 1967 Colin Hodgetts' Jo Jonah was published, after having received its
first production in England at the St. John-at-Hackney church. As
described by Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell, "'Jo Jonah' is a rather noisy
musical, liked by the young."53
In 1967 Madeleine L'Engle's whimsical dramatization for children,

The Journey with Jonah, was performed at Columbia University's McMillan
Theatre by students of St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's School in New York
City. The text was published in the same year. In England, Laurence
Manley's Jonah appeared in or shortly before 1968.54 Swedish dramatist
Olov Hartman's On That Day was written in 1967 at the request of the
kklrld Council of Churches for its Fourth Assembly held in 1968 in Uppsala,

Sweden, where the play was performed in the city's sports arena.55 0n

 

52 Letter of September 28, 1978, from Lawrence H. Waddy to the
P re s ent writer.

53 Letter of June 5, 1975, from Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell to the
P re s ent writer.

54 Ibid. The manuscript, undated, was received by the Library of
the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain in 1968.

55 Olov Hartman, On That Day, trans. Brita Stendahl (Philadelphia:
F0 rtr‘ess, 1968), Introduction, pp. vii-viii.

 

25
That Day was also published in an English translation in 1968. The play
is based primarily on the book of Amos. Jonah appears as a character
only briefly, in "The Sixth Song," with three lines. Before an Israelite
assembly Jonah attempts to support Amos' claim that current political and
business practices are unjust to the poor as well as nationally isola-
tionist, but he is laughed out of court. Gordon C. Bennett's So Why Does
that Weirdo Prophet Keep Watching the Water? was presented by students at
Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, in 1969. The play was
published in 1973. The short Jonah, You're My Man, a "street-talk"
dramatization not intended for performance, was published in Karl F.
Burke's anthology God is Beautiful, Man in 1969.

In 1970 Sarah Walton Miller published her second "Jonah" dramati-
zation, The Man Who Said No to God, as a "discussion-starter" play for
junior high-age young people. Marion Fairman's In The Belly of the Fish
appeared in print in 1971. In the same year David Campton's Jonah was
presented in Chelmsford Cathedral in England. The play was published in
an acting edition the following year. Brian Tunstall's Jonah was written
in or shortly before 1972.56 Jonah, a puppet play for children by Ewart
A. and Lola M. Autry, was published in 1972. Lawrence Waddy's musical
Jonah was performed in a revised form in 1975 and published in 1978. Two
"Jonah" productions by church youth groups occurred in 1977. Jim Rose's
The Fish W10 Went Manning was performed by the author and youth of the
North West Bible Church in Dallas, Texas; and John J. Debrecini's nmsical

Jonah of'Joppa was presented by senior high young people at the Wyckoff

 

55 The manuscript, undated, was received by the Library of the
Religious Drama Society of Great Britain in 1972. Letter from Kathleen
Bainbridge-Bell.

 

v. 1

26

Reformed Church in Wyckoff, New Jersey. W. A. Poovey's Jonah--The
world's Greatest Miracle was published in 1972 to be used as ". . . an
introduction to a Bible class, as a discussion starter, or as an alter-
native to the Sunday sermon . . ."57

Chicago's Body Politic in 1978 performed a "story theater" version
of Jonah. The production, directed by James Shiflett, employed panto-
mime, mime (as in the depiction of the ship), and configurization (as in
the representation of the whale swallowing Jonah). Beginning in the
spring and continuing for nine months or a year, Jonah toured churches on
Sunday mornings as part of a program of Bible stories presented through
story theater techniques. In the fall of 1978 Jonah was performed on

NBC-affiliated WMAQ for the religious television program Everyman.58

 

57 W. A. Poovey, Six Prophets for Today: Dramas on Jonah, Obadiah,
Habakkuk, Hosea, Micah, Amos (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), back cover.

53 The writer is indebted to Mark Atkinson for details of this
production. A member of the original company, Atkinson played the Jonah
role for the television performance. On stage Jonah had been played by
a woman, chosen because Jonah had to be picked up and thrown about a
good deal and this particular actress was the smallest member of the
cast. Atkinson recalls that church audiences frequently objected to the
casting.

CHAPTER TWO

Story-telling Treatments of Jonah

More than one commentator on the book of Jonah has noted the dra-
matic, if not stageworthy quality of its structure. In arguing against
the widely-held view that the Biblical work is an attack upon Israelite
religious nationalism, Elias Bickerman refers to the book as a drama:

. . the morality play of Jonah has a cast of three characters:

God, the prophet, and the Ninevites . . . there is nothing about

Israel. The opposition between Israel and the Gentiles ii intro-

duced by commentators who find more than is really there.
Bickerman describes the book of Jonah in terms of strong dramatic action.

Its plot is simple: a prophet announces the destruction of a city;

the inhabitants repent and are spared. This sermonizing theme is

transformed into an exciting tale by holding back the solution and
keeping the reader in suspense.
The Biblical writer first wrings suspense from his theme of the dis-
obedient prophet.

How would he be compelled to fulfill the command? In such cases

the usual means of celestial discipline was bodily pain. But this

trite motif is shunned by our author.

. . . Jonah's self-sacrifice shows his faith in God's justice; thus

the reader knows in advance that the prophet will be saved. But

how?
The task is accomplished through the introduction of a new danger in the

giant fish. What should be Jonah's finish is actually the means of his

 

1 Bickerman, p. 28.
2 Ibid., p. 4

27

28
rescue.3 Again employing the terminology of dramatic criticism, Bicker-
man points out that in the sparing of Nineveh from destruction ". . . the
narrator introduces a new reversal of situation."4 T. Henshaw describes
the book of Jonah as ". . . a good short story," but with such character-
istics as plotting, scene division, and characterization as to suggest
again the vehicle of drama.

Though slight the plot is well-knit and is developed in three
clearly defined scenes, namely, (1) the flight of Jonah which ends
by his being swallowed by a fish and vomited on land; (2) his
preaching to the Ninevites and their sudden conversion; (3) his
meeting with Yahweh who rebukes him for his intolerance. From the
moment Jonah appears, fleeing from the presence of Yahweh, our
interest is roused and is sustained throughout the story, which
ends abruptly, leaving us to wonder what happened to the Ninevites
and to Jonah. Though the characters are lightly sketched, they are
not dim shadowy figures but real individuals who can be easily
distinguished. Even Yahweh is not a mere abstraction but a living
personality, who speaks and acts like a human being. The book is
the work of a born storyteller endowed with a fertile imagination,
a sense of dgama, a touch of kindly humour and the power of graphic
description.-

T. T. Perowne says of the book of Jonah: "In style it is almost dramatic.

 

3 Ibid.. pp. 10-12. Bickerman cites Jerome as the source for his
perception of the dramatic irony in the fish swallowing Jonah. Critics
would not by any means be generally in accord with Bickerman's sug-
gestion that the book of Jonah is by design or in effect suspenseful.
But note Leslie C. Allen's description of the book of Jonah in terms of
the "element of surprise":

In fact this little book is a series of surprises; it is crammed
with an accumulation of hair-raising and eye-popping phenomena, one
after the other. The violent seastorm, the submarine-like fish in
which Jonah survives as he composes a song, the mass conversion of
Nineveh, the magic plant--these are not commonplace features of
prophetic narratives.

Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah and Micah, R. K.
Harrison, gen. ed., The New International Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1976) p. 176.

4 Bickerman, p. 13.

5 T[homas] Henshaw, The Latter Prophets (London: George Allen and
Unwin, 1958), p. 289.

29

Its teaching, whatever it may be, is rather acted before our eyes than
uttered for our ears." Perowne divides the book into "Three acts, as it
were in a drama . . ." paralleling the three scenes of Henshaw's "short
story."6

Hans Walter Wolff goes so far as to divide the book literally into
acts, each with its own locale. The acts he labels as First Act (on the
way to Joppa): Commission and Escape; Second Act (on the sea): Jonah's
Fear of God and the Sailors' Fear of God; Third Act (on the way to
Nineveh): Turn-About and New Commission; Fourth Act (Nineveh): Jonah's
Sermon, Nineveh's About-Face, and God's Compassion; Fifth Act (East of
Nineveh): Jonah's Anger and God's Compassion.7

The playwrights to be considered in this story-telling category
all have sought to realize the book's dramatic potential in actual play
form. Though interpretive choices may at times have had to be made,
these dramatizations are not intended to present a particular (or at
least controversial) critical opinion about the book's purpose, meaning,
or theme. Nor is it apparently the intention of these dramatists to draw
for their audience an overt moral lesson from the Biblical material. Nor
with this group is the Biblical source employed as a vehicle for expres-
sing an author's personal vision or commentary on contemporary life. The
plays may indeed reflect a writer's own distinct perspective, and may

reflect the intellectual or cultural milieu in which he or she is

 

6 T. T. Perowne, ed., Obadiah and’Jonah (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1905), pp. 47, 53-55.

7 Hans Walter Wolff, "Jonah--A Drama in Five Acts," trans. Elisa-
beth Kohl and Rod Hutton, Currents in Theology and Mission 3:1 (Febru-
ary, 1976), pp. 4-7.

30
writing. A playwright may even employ contemporary dress and locate the

places and events in modern times. But "the telling of the story" never-
theless remains the dominant dramaturgic purpose.

The earliest of these dramatizations is also perhaps the most fas-
cinating. Written in 1872 as a "closet drama" not intended for the
stage, John Ritchie's The Life of'Jonah, the Prophet is rich in the
English romanticism of the second half of the nineteenth century.8 The
dramatic poem is written in iambic pentameter, and the language up to
Jonah's arrival in Nineveh is ornate and ponderously lyrical. In the
latter part of the text, however, the lines are frequently quite crisp
and direct and less marked by the flowery rhetoric in which the earlier

episodes are told.

The Jonah narrative is followed in its entirety, with, however,
expansion of scenes and the addition of wholly new scenes and characters.
Lying in bed, Jonah hears the call. With Byronic heroism his servant
immediately announces that he will also undertake the dangerous mission.
Jonah is concerned for his reputation, however, because he is convinced
that the commanded prophecy is actually for the purpose of saving the
Ninevites. He then dreams in anticipation of the romantically lonely

life of the wandering rebel against God.

On the ship the seamen are polite and civil, representing a kind of

enlightenment in the manner of Lessing. Justice and mercy, Jonah learns

 

8 John Ritchie, The Life of Jonah, the Prophet (London: Partri dge,
1872). Action in Ritchie's play is continuous, with sub-headings
indicating a change in locale ("Joppa," "Haran, in Syria" which appears
to become Nineveh without this time any indication of change of scene,
"Gath-Hepher"), but with no actual transition provided. Within a char-
acter's single speech a dramatically impossible passage of time may
occur. A good deal of the action is simply narrated by an observer.
The voice of God is never heard, his words repeated only by one of the
characters.

31
from the sailors, are superior to any religious creed. The captain's
young son, portrayed in a quite sentimental fashion, describes the coming
storm. The mariners suddenly become extremely pagan in the drawing of
the lots, a scene devised with a good deal of excitement. As the sailors
pray to be spared the guilt of this man's death, Jonah is suddenly found
to be already overboard. The captain gives the mundane instruction that
the ship be inspected for damage, and Jonah's heroically noble and rather
miraculous entry into the sea is depicted. In the fish Jonah marvels at
length at his undersea world. Then he himself describes God's command to
the fish to regurgitate him, and resolves to follow the example of the
fish in obedience. Finally, near Tarshish, occurs the scene of the mass
conversion of the sailors.

Journeying to Nineveh, Jonah recites a fantasized early Old Testa-
ment history. He stops to rest and hears about Nineveh from a shepherd
and his wife, who engage in a genuinely dramatic debate over how rich an
entertainment this prophet should be afforded. Jonah learns how truly
vicious a place is Nineveh and how fierce its inhabitants. In the reci-
tation of its sins it is clear that Nineveh's failings are essentially
ethical. Having no idea of what he should preach to the people, Jonah is
assured that when it is time he will receive the words to be delivered.

Jonah quite miraculously passes by the guards and through the gate
into Nineveh. He delivers his message and becomes convinced that the
city indeed will be destroyed. The prophecy itself is particularly
crisp. Jonah reiterates "Yet forty days, and Nineveh's destroyed" as a
refrain to the narration of events in Nineveh by the Serjeant and other
citizens. Nineveh's original laws, it is revealed, were just, but they

have been since abandoned in practice. The people's repentance appears

32
motivated by the nature of Jonah's message itself and by the mystery and
authority attending his presence in the city. The extremely severe
fasting is described in detail. The king, who evinces better judgment
and greater perception than does Jonah, resolves that the people shall
remain God-fearing.

When Nineveh is spared Jonah is invited to join with the people in
celebration. Though he feels he should accept the invitation, he recalls
his earlier conviction that this assignment would damage his reputation
and cannot bring himself to do it. The ship's captain is sent to eaves-
drop on Jonah so that the king might learn anything further of importance
to his kingdom's well-being. Jonah comes to understand the lesson to
which he has been subjected, and proceeds to moralize on the theme of
ethics in personal and political relationships. He resolves to go to
Joppa to see how the mariners have fared. There he chooses an upper room
in which to meditate, because in eight hundred years ". . . a greater man
than Jonah shall appear/and lodge within that self-same, upper room."9
The message delivered by this later prophet will be of salvation rather
than destruction. In Jonah's vision Jew and Gentile shall ". . . live as
brothers, 'seeing eye to eye.'" (pp. 42-43) Finally Jonah and his former
companions enjoy a reunion on the ship.

Though the egalitarian sentiments and the stress on ethical behavior
suggest a thematic interest on Ritchie's part outside those derived from
his Biblical source, these matters are treated really as assumptions
rather than as a primary focus for the reader's attention and reflection.

Typical of the dramatization of Biblical material for church

 

9 Concerning the idea of Jesus as the "greater man than Jonah" see
Luke 11:29-32.

33
production is Harry W. Githens' 1927 A Fish Story.10 Githens' stated
purpose is:
. . to present an accurate interpretation of the Scripture story,
strengthened by imaginary dialogue of "what probably happened"
during the intervals not recorded in the Bible . . The words, for
the most part, have been taken directly from the Bible narrative,
so that the actors will be learning Scripture as well as a story."
The four brief scenes take place, respectively, in Jonah's home in
Zebulun, on the ship, in the Ninevite king's palace, and outside Nineveh.
The scene inside the whale is omitted, necessitating Jonah's recitation
to the king of his adventure. Otherwise there is no departure from the
incidents of the Biblical book, except for Jonah's final line which
Githens has added in order that the prophet's own response to the lesson
delivered to him by God not be left in doubt:

O Lord, my God, forgive the anger of Thy servant, I pray Thee.

Nevermore shall I rebel against Thee, for Thy mercy is great above

the heavens, and Thy truth reacheth unto the clouds. (p. 200)
As evidenced in the above passage, Githens attempts in his dialogue to
capture the language of the King James Version of the Bible. Character
motivations are not made clear, and transitions are not provided between
scenes. At the end of Scene One, for example, Jonah is left hiding his

face on his couch; and at the opening of Scene Two he is on board ship in

the process of being questioned about his sleeping through a storm.

 

10 In Githens, pp. 195-200.
11 Githens, Introduction, p. 13.

34
Written for children, Madeleine L'Engle's The Journey with Jonah

tells the story of Jonah with considerable whimsy.12 The crisp dialogue,

partly in verse--both rhymed and unrhymed--and partly in prose, serves to

create a keen sense of action. No change of scenery is required, as

Jonah's various companions enter to describe events that are taking place

in Gath-hepher, on the ship, or in Nineveh. Aside from Jonah, all of the

characters are non-human. The talking animals include birds, rats, a

fish, a turtle, the worm, and the whale--the last heard but not seen.13

 

12 Madeleine L'Engle, The Journey with Jonah (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1967). The play was performed by students of St.
Hilda's and St. Hugh's School in Columbia University's McMillan Theatre.

13 Amon the other "Jonah" dramatists, James Bridie makes use of
not only an gunseen) talking whale but a talking jackal as well. The
present author is indebted to Kay Hubbard, who has discussed her play
with L'Engle, for the information that L'Engle was aware of Bridie's
dramatization when writing her own The Journey with Jonah. As in
Bridie's play, L'Engle's whale is loquacious and verbose, and instructs
Jonah through direct admonition, sarcasm and psychology. A comparison
of stage directions for the whale scene in the two dramas is partic-
ularly interesting. L'Engle notes:

A red spotlight thrown on the stage served as the interior of the
whale's belly, and two tape recorders were hooked together so that
the whale's voice came out with an eerie hollowness. At intervals
the whale blew into the mike so that he sounded as if he were
spouting. (p. 63)

Bridie suggests:

The stage is entirely dark except for a red spotlight in the
insufficient beams of which sits JONAH . . . bowing his head
before a stream of eloquence that flows from a dozen amplifiers in
the auditorium. The audience is to be deafened by the bellowing
noise . .

James Bridie, Jonah and the Whale (London: Constable, 1932), p. 36.
Both Bridie's and L'Engle's Jonahs argue that too much prophetic work
needs to be done at home to permit a trip to Nineveh. And in both
dramatizations the prophet's fellow townspeople show him official
respect while taking unkindly to too rigorous a concern for their moral
behavior. For a discussion of Bridie's play see chapter five.

35
L'Engle's telling of the Jonah story may be said to emphasize the Bib-

lical themes rather than to depict the Biblical incidents. At the begin-
ning of the play Jonah offers among his excuses for not going to Nineveh
that the pagan city is not the concern of the Israelites' God and fur-
thermore that the Ninevites are the enemies of the Hebrews and therefore
will hardly welcome or heed him. Later, on discovering that Nineveh is
to be spared, he repeats these arguments, insisting that Gentiles have no
right to mercy and adding that he knew all along that God was likely to

relent.

The trouble is that he's a gracious God, and merciful, slow to
anger and of great kindness. It is unreliable to have so soft a
heart. (p. 53
In all of these excuses L'Engle reflects a variety of scholarly opinions
on the Biblical author's view of Jonah's reasons for his reluctance to

preach to Nineveh.14

 

14 L'Engle does not choose the two justifications of Jonah's flight
and anger most commonly employed by the "Jonah" dramatists. One, the
notion that Jonah did not wish to risk being known as a liar or "false
prophet," has acquired a currency which Bickerman attributes to its
espousal by John Calvin. The other justification is the anti-univer-
salist posture discussed later in this chapter (see p. 42, n. 21) wherein
". . . Jonah was not grieved for Israel's sake but begrudged the Gentiles
their salvation." Bickerman considers this a Christian view which had
solidified by the end of the fourth century, with Augustine determining
that Jonah prefigured an Israel unwilling to accept universal salvation.
The idea was rejected by most medieval commentators, such as Jerome,
because Jonah had come to be regarded as the prefiguration of Christ.
Martin Luther, however, revived the characterization of Jonah as the
parochial nationalist. Bickerman. PP. 17-18.

Closer to The Journey with Jonah's argument is the critical anal-
ysis of D. E. Hart-Davies who suggests that Jonah fled not because of
cowardice and not because of "religious exclusiveness" and not out of

. . jealousy for his prophetic reputation . . . But because of
patriotic zeal for Israel's preservation . . . Jonah's refusal
sprang from a two-fold dread. As a patriot, he was full of fear of
the ruthless ferocity of the Assyrians as the world-power destined
to destroy Israel. As a prophet, he was acquainted with the ways
of Jehova. Therefore he was fearful of the tenderness in the heart

36

Owl, making humorous use of the traditional classification of Jonah
as one of the twelve "minor prophets" in the Old Testament canon, asserts
that Jonah is ". . . as a minor prophet, egregiously successful." (p. 49)
Representing God's point of view, Turtle employs the vine, which had
sprung up to shelter Jonah and then suddenly withered, in an expanded
analogy with nature to make the point regarding the sparing of the city.

It is easier, prophet, to destroy the entire universe

than to prepare this vine in whose shade we now relax.

Can you create with all your anger a single leaf?

And yet it was easier to create all the stars in the sky than to
prepare me.

 

of God, who, he reasoned, might spare Nineveh should the Ninevites
repent after hearing the proclamation of their doom. And, for
Israel's sake, Jonah resolves that Nineveh shall have no chance of
repentance.

Hart-Davies, pp. 50-54. This view follows that of Jerome, whom Hart-
Davies quotes:

"The Prophet knew, through the inward suggestion of the Holy Spirit,
that the repentance of the Gentiles would be the ruin of the Jews.
Therefore, as a lover of his country, he was not so much displeased
at the thought of Nineveh's salvation, as he was adverse to the
destruction of his own people." (p. 48)

Bickerman, offering the same quotation from Jerome, sets the comment in a
somewhat different context.

The traditional Jewish explanation was that Jonah, being a
prophet, knew in advance that Nineveh would repent and be saved.
But that would put to shame stiff-necked Israel. "Since the heathen
are nearer to repentance, I might be causing Israel to be condemned."

Rabbi Nathan in the second century went so far as to argue that Jonah
boarded the ship not to flee but to drown for the sake of Israel--later a
Christian view as well, as in the thought of Rupert of Deutz in the
twelfth century. Jerome countered the "whitewash" of Jonah by empha-
sizing Jonah's perception that Israel, with the advantage of so many
prophets of God in her history, would indeed look bad in the eyes of the
repentant Ninevites. In the twelfth century Jewish commentator David
Kimchi of Narbonne proposed that the book of Jonah was written, in fact,
to set an example for Israel. The transition from Jonah as dour patriot
to Jonah as type of a parochial Israel is thus apparent in the critical
tradition. Bickerman, pp. 15-17.

37

You think he would find it difficult to destroy Nineveh,

that great city?

A thunderbolt could lay waste to it in three seconds,

but compassion takes eternity. (p. 54)
Then Worm, having destroyed the plant, argues the lesson of this inci-
dent: if Jonah so pities the vine, should he not even more pity the worm
(about to be eaten by Jay), and even much more pity the people and beasts
of Nineveh? L'Engle maintains a psychological consistency, as well as
'retaining the note of ambiguity on which the Biblical book ends, in
Jonah's departure for home not really much wiser in the ways of God than
when he began his mission.

Also intended for children is the puppet play Jonah by Ewart A. and
Lola M. Autry.15 The play relates the major incidents of the book of
Jonah in language intended to be comprehensible to young children, with
frequent close paraphrases of the Biblical book itself. The seven scenes
are quite brief, with successive single speeches each tending to explain
an action or call attention to a visual element. As an example of such

"explanatory" dialogue, in Scene Five the Ninevite King is visited by his

Servant.

KING: Have you heard the man, Jonah, preach?

SERVANT: 0, yes, Your Majesty. He is going throughout the city
telling all the people to repent--to stop sinning against the
Lord God.

KING: So I've been told. It has been said that he prophesies the
overthrow of Nineveh just forty days from now if we do not
obey God. Do you believe this?

SERVANT: Indeed I do, Sire. And if I may say so you seem, by the
way you are dressed, also to believe what Jonah says.

KING: Yes, that's why I, the king of Nineveh, am wearing sackcloth
instead of my royal robes. That is why I sit in ashes. I,
too, have been convicted of my sins. And like my people I am
sorry for my wickedness. (p. 79)

 

15 Ewart A. Autry and Lola M. Autry, Jonah in Bible Puppet Plays
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1972). pp. 72-82. Though hand
puppets are described, the authors assert that other types nfight be
employed (p. 7).

38

Whale and Worm appear as characters, but are non-speaking. In
addition to the puppets the Voice of God is heard from off-stage, and a
human Narrator appears at the beginning of Scene Two--after Jonah himself
has delivered part of the narration--and thereafter remains visible to
the audience. The Narrator recites some of the action of the story,
which is occasionally repeated by a puppet character. There is little
interaction among characters and Jonah frequently talks aloud to himself.
Scene Three consists of the whale furnishing the visual interest while
Jonah's voice is heard, presumably emanating from the beast's interior.
Unfilled breaks in action and dialogue occur, as when the seamen leave
the stage to awaken Jonah and bring him up on deck.

God is Beautiful, Man is the third in Carl F. Burke's series of
collections of Biblical paraphrases by urban youngsters in jails and
detention homes.16 As perhaps further evidence of the inherently dra-
matic nature of the book of Jonah, its "translation" is one of the few in
the anthology done in play form. Though the anonymous teller of Jonah,
You'reMy Man has not intended that the work be performed, he or she has
in each of the seven scenes realized a major action drawn from the
Biblical source. In Act One, Scene One, God calls Jonah; in Scene Two
Jonah bargains for passage in a ship bound for Egypt. Act Two, Scene
One, finds Jonah sick and hanging over the rail while the storm gathers;
in Scene Two matchsticks are drawn and Jonah, receiving the short one,

goes overboard; in Scene Three Jonah is swallowed by the whale17 who has

 

15 Carl F. Burke, God is Beautiful, Man (New York: Association,
1969); Jonah, You're My Man. pp. 110-116. Previous titles in Burke's
series are God Is for Real, Man and Treat Me Cool, Lord.

17 The whale has three lines in the scene, and is thus one of the
few talking whales in the tradition of "Jonah" drama.

39
mistaken him for something to eat, receives God's second call, and is
thrown up onto the beach. In Act Three, Scene One, Jonah preaches,
secures the peoples' repentance, and complains about losing face when the
city is spared; in Scene Two he learns the lesson of the vine.

Jonah, You're My Man is spare in dialogue and moves rapidly from
incident to incident. In the final scene an entire day passes within a
single speech by Jonah. All of the essential circumstances of the book
of Jonah, except for the wearing of sackcloth and ashes, are incorpo-
rated. The modernization and urbanization of the story are reflected in
the street language spoken by all characters, the lack of reference to
farm animals, and the contemporary city setting. "The city is full of
hoods, horsemen, freaks, con artists, loan sharks and people like that."
(p. 110) Jonah, appointed by God as his "Reverend," preaches partic-
ularly against drug users and pushers. The sailors, rather than praying
to various pagan dieties, attempt to allay the storm with lucky dice, a
lucky quarter, and a rabbit's foot.

Three of the dramatizations belonging essentially to the "straight
story-telling" group nevertheless suggest a degree of interpretive or
adaptive treatment, thus placing them closer to the plays to be con-
sidered in the following chapter or those in chapter six. While these
three dramas do not attempt to "explain" the Biblical book or illustrate
a particular critical interpretation, they at least from time to time
raise questions or issues not contained strictly within the Biblical
narrative itself. In addition, in terms of plot and characterization,
their tendency is to resolve such apparent contradictions and tie up such

loose ends as are found in the Biblical source.

40
The essentially straight story-telling of Laurence Manley's Jonah

is achieved despite some rearrangement of events and the omission of the
scene inside the whale.18 Act One is set on a hillside near Jonah's
farm. Jonah has returned home after his attempted flight and deliverance
from the belly of the whale. In Manley's version, therefore, there is
apparently a considerable lapse of time between Jonah's adventures at sea
and his second call to preach to the Ninevites. As the prophet and his
wife discuss Jonah's relation to God, exposition is introduced to provide
the information concerning Jonah's reaction to the first call. As Jonah
muses, his wife complains: "It's coming, it's coming. Now we shall have
the whole story and breakfast time will never come." (p. 2) And Jonah

indeed tells of his original disobedience.

Through flashback the mariners are introduced, bringing with them a
cut-out ship. The language in the flashback is less colloquial and
somewhat more formal and elevated than in the rest of the play, perhaps
in order to distinguish the scene as a kind of dream sequence. In a
second brief flashback the whale enters and swallows the prophet.19 The
act ends with Jonah receiving his commission again, and agreeing to carry

it out.

 

18 Laurence Manley, Jonah: A Play in Two Acts (1968, typescript). The
play was performed in 1967 by the Tidmarsh Players of the New Road
Baptist Church in Oxford, England, and subsequently toured to other
churches in the area.

19 Manley describes these two properties as follows:

Our ship was of flat hardboard pierced with holes to accomodate the
oars. which were sections of a tent-pole. It was bolted on to a
frame of "dexion" strip and weights were attached to keep it erect
when set down by the sailors who carried it on stage. It could be
taken apart and transported in two sections which were bolted
together for performance. The whale was also of hardboard but
mounted on small wheels to facilitate easy movement across the
stage. (p. 14)

Manley further suggests that "Jonah nay be swallowed by the whale's
occluding him." (p. 15)

41

Act Two takes place on the road to Nineveh. Manley again restricts
the action to a single locale, in this act through bringing the Ninevites
to Jonah and obviating the necessity for him to enter the city at all.
Dramatic economy is achieved in handling the story's concluding events.
Jonah's plant grows while he dozes and withers immediately upon his
falling asleep again.20 Then the lesson to be drawn from all of this is
made quickly.

Jonah engages in frequent monologue, at times talking to himself and
at times speaking directly to the audience. In his conversations with
God, only Jonah's voice is actually heard. Much of the dialogue is
straight narration, particularly in Act One where Jonah and his wife
alternately address the audience and then converse with each other.
Several songs are called for, to be sung respectively by Jonah, the
mariners, three Ninevite maidens. and the King's retinue.

Manley resolves one of the apparent contradictions in Jonah's moti-
vation by having him offer the Ninevites salvation through repentance as
a genuine option, but at the same time hoping they will not follow his
advice. Later Jonah does not really ask for death. He simply complains,
"Lord, it's too hard for me, I can't stand it, I'd sooner be dead."

(p. 12) The "interpretive" emphases include a thumbnail history lesson
which Jonah delivers at the beginning of Act Two. Relating the history
of Israel from the time of Abraham, Jonah arrives at the just reason for
the Hebrews' hate of the Assyrians and the injustice of God's allowing

. them this loophole to wriggle out of the punishment they

 

20 An earlier economy in action appears more difficult to accom-
plish. The Captain of the ship orders that Jonah be awakened and
brought forward, and continues his speech, now addressed to Jonah, with
no time allowed for the stage business to have been carried out.

42
deserve . . ." (p. 7) The importance of ethical behavior is stressed in
the King's ordering social reform in Nineveh as well as the more formal
ritual of repentance. Manley's understanding of the point of the book of
Jonah appears to be the universalism which many critics find to be the

lesson of the Biblical book.21 Whereas the Biblical account

 

21 A. R. Johnson summarizes the universalist point of view and its
critical standing:

It is now generally agreed by students of the O.T. who have
been trained in the principles of literary criticism that the Book
of Jonah, though apparently purporting to deal with a prophet of
this name who lived in the reign of Jeroboam II, is really a
parable (or even an allegory) designed to teach that the gracious
purposes of God were not limited to Israel but embraced other
peoples as well, if they, too, repented of their evil. As such
(and in virtue of its strongly Aramaic colouring, as well as the
fact that from the author's standpoint the greatness of Nineveh
already lay in the past), it is to be assigned to the post-exilic
period as being a protest against the narrowly exclusive spirit
which sprang up in Judaism from the fifth century B.C. onwards.

A. R. Johnson, "Jonah 11.3-10: A Study in Cultic Phantasy," in H. H.
Rowley, ed., Studies in Old Testament Prophecy Presented to Theodore H.
Robinson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950). p. 82. See John-
son's second footnote on this page for a listing of scholars supporting
this view.

As B. Davie Napier points out, the dreaded Assyrians were a particularly
apt group for the author of Jonah to single out to emphasize Yahweh's
concern for all peoples. B. Davie Napier, song of'the Vineyard: A
Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1962), p. 367. The repentance of the Ninevites can be seen as
a reproach to the Jews who have existed ". . . amid so much greater
light . . ." than have the ferocious pagan Assyrians. E. B. Pusey, The
Minor Prophets: A Commentary, Explanatory and Practical, vol. 1: Hosea,
Joel, Amos, Obadiah and Jonah (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House,
1965), p. 372. It is relatively easy to move as earlier commentators
have from this understanding of the purpose of the book of Jonah to a
consideration of the story as elaborate allegory ". . . in which every-
thing has a hidden meaning" relating to Israelite history. John Mauch-
line, however, after summarizing its characteristics warns against the
interpretation of Jonah as allegory rather than as ". . . a parable or
a didactic poem." John Mauchline, Prophets of Israel (3): The Twolve,
William Barclay and F. F. Bruce, gen. eds., Bible Guides, no. 9 (London:
Lutterworth, and New York and Nashville: Abingdon, 1964), p. 42. For a
similar discussion see also Henshaw, p. 288.

43
ends with no reference to Jonah's response to God's last word, Manley's
Jonah does appropriate the "lesson."

Oh, is that the city? Is that how you see it? All those peOple
walking about, are they Assyrians? But it's beautiful, it's so
beautiful . . . I think I'm beginning to understand. I feel
suddenly shrunken . . . like the gourd ... . and small and mean.

I did the things you told me, Lord, and yet inside I felt quite
different. You showed me, Lord. You really wanted [King] Choraxis
to repent, didn't you? You never wanted to destroy him. You
really loved the Assyrians--always--you really loved those As-
syrians all the time. (p. 13)

 

Short of allegorizing, it is nevertheless possible to perceive the
prophet Jonah as representing a religiously isolationist nation.

The book of Jonah is a prophetic story indicating the inclusiveness
of the Divine government for Nineveh as well as Israel; and re-
buking the exclusiveness of the Hebrew nation as manifested in the
prophet himself.

G. Campbell Morgan, Voices of Tidelve Hebrew Prophets, Commonly Called
the Minor Prophets (New York, London and Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell,
n.d.), p. 12. The choice of Jonah to represent the national myopia has
been commented on as particularly fortuitous. "Being the child of an
insular society . . .," suggests Geoffrey T. Bull, Jonah has a natural
parochialism which dominates his character despite the abundant prece-
dence for prophetic universalism. Geoffrey T. Bull, The City and the
Sign: An Interpretation of the Book of Jonah (London: Hodder and Stough-
ton, 1970). PP. 24-28. Leslie C. Allen further observes:

There is shrewd psychological insight in the choice of Jonah as the
key figure. Nothing was known about him apart from the information
in 2K.14:25, and no writings derived from him have been received
into the Judean collection of holy books. 2K.14:25 sets him in the
reign of the eighth-century king Jeroboam II as a nationalistic
prophet who forecast the extension of the frontiers of the Northern
Kingdom. He is thus ideal as the butt for an attack on religious
nationalism.

Allen, p. 179. Mauchline, specifying those post-exilic prophetic books
whose exclusivist attitude Jonah was intended to combat, points out that
not only the Ninevites but also the pagan sailors who so quickly accept
Jonah's God serve to illustrate the author's universalist view. "The
mariners in ch. 1 behave as highly estimable characters compared with
the fugitive Jonah, whose thoughts are only for his own safety." Later
Jonah himself, ironically, ". . . contrasts the mercy and love of God
21th his own selfishness and churlishness (4:2-4)." Mauchline. PD. 40,

44

Jerome Bayer's Pity for the Gourd consists of a prologue, epilogue,
and four scenes.22 In the Prologue and Epilogue Jonah appears alone,
speaking to the contemporary audience. The remaining scenes, with the
addition of a few characters not found in the source, cover the major
incidents of the book of Jonah. Generally Bayer concentrates on the
action of the Biblical book, avoiding long narrative passages. The
movement from scene to scene is kept continuous through shifting the
action from one side to the other of the relatively bare stage. The
final scene, set in Nineveh, moves somewhat more slowly than the earlier
scenes because of the playwright's use of a number of blackouts to
indicate passage of time. The play is written in a free verse which is
effectively employed particularly in the second scene on board the
Tarshish-bound ship. The five Sailors and the Shipmaster engage in a
terse stichomythic exchange as they battle the sea. With dramatic
economy Jonah is aroused from slumber, the lots are cast, and Jonah is
deposited overboard. .

Jonah in the Prologue promises to fill significant gaps in the
Biblical record, though the non-Biblical material in the ensuing scenes

does not seem particularly substantial. In the Prologue Jonah also

expresses . a dread concern . . . over the ". . . dire peril etched

in poison/across the face of the earth." But the contemporary peril is
never specified beyond the Prologue's generalized

I hear it in a vast choral yawn

of unconcern;

in the cries of hungry wrath I hear it;

I see it festering

in the sickly silent terror of annihilation. (p. 2)

 

21 Jerome Bayer, Pity for the Gourd (n.d., typescript). The play
was written in the 1950's or early 1960's. Bayer has designated his
scenes 1, 2, 3, and 5, with no fourth scene indicated in the script.

45

And, despite Jonah's insistence that the matter is urgent, what one is to
do about the peril is not clarified. Jonah refers in the Prologue to a
legend concerning his having been allowed to enter Paradise following his
Nineveh experience. In the Epilogue he returns to this legend, claiming
that since dwelling there he has learned to appreCiate his finitude, to
be content with the kind of obedience which enables one to accomplish
those tasks realistically within one's abilities. Though such a perspec-
tive is urged upon the members of the audience, the point itself is
opaque.

A summary of the themes which Bayer appears to have in mind reveals
their inconsistency and incompleteness. Scene One consists of dialogue
between Jonah and his Wife. She is proud of her husband's latest call,
and encourages him to obey the voice he has heard. Bayer avoids the
contradiction between Jonah's stated reasons for fleeing essentially by
having them all presented together at the outset. Jonah argues that the
Ninevites nay well repent and be spared and that he will thus have helped
them, the enemy, to destroy Israel. The Wife counters that if they
repent they will no longer be bent on the destruction of other nations.
Jonah complains that the Ninevites should be as strangers to the God of

Israel. His Wife responds with the standard universalist argument:

We, my husband, have no monopoly
on the love of God.
He is Lord of Nineveh as well. (p. 7)

Jonah is concerned that he will be mocked, as has happened in the past.

She asks:

Is it better that you be spared

a pain to pride

than that thousands of God's creatures
be spared their lives? (p. 8)

Jonah concludes the exchange with the confession that, whatever the

arguments,

46

There is a force, a terrible force

that drives me to flight!

I cannot check it, I cannot!

I am helpless, helpless! (p. 9)

Early in Scene One God in his call to Jonah makes clear that the
sins of Nineveh involve injustice as well as licentiousness. Scene Five
(the actual fourth scene) opens with Jonah already preaching to a fright-
ened crowd. He criticizes in particular their penchant for warfare,
especially against Israel, but also cites ethical failings, materialism,
lust, and greed. The King issues the traditional proclamation, followed
by a brief exchange with Jonah through which the prophet reveals his
intransigence. He

(. . . turns slowly to look down upon the king with loathing:)

JONAH: I have no ear for the easy music

of repentance
nor an eye for the garb of contrition. (p. 21)

Upon the sparing of the city Jonah complains that he has simply
rearmed the enemy warriors, and is then mocked by the Apparitions of Two
Taunters. Alone, Jonah reiterates that though he knows God to be mer-
ciful he himself can feel only the demands of justice.23 It must be God
himself who has-“. . . made the nature that commands me!" (p. 22)
Therefore God should now allow Jonah to die. God argues that in the
rescue from the fish Jonah himself has known the divine mercy. Further-
more, God reminds him,

I have taught you the hate of evil, yes;

but have I not taught you as well

the evil of hate? (p. 23)

At this point Jonah becomes convinced that he should die because he

cannot forgive himself.

 

23 Robert Frost advances a similar idea in his A Masque of.Mercy,
on which see below. PP. 137-144.

47

I cannot serve God's mercy

and I cannot change!

I am at odds with God! (P. 24)

An Apparition of His Wife appears, to end the scene with a wish that
Jonah might be at peace with himself.

With neither the "filling in" of the Jonah narrative realized nor
the promise of contemporary relevance fulfilled, the focus of Pity for
the Gourd is finally on Jonah himself. Bayer seeks to understand the
Biblical prophet from the standpoint of an apparently existentialist view
of human nature. In Scene Three, consisting primarily of Jonah's prayer
for deliverance from the whale and God's reply that he shall indeed yet
preach to the Ninevites, Jonah questions his own identity. To be cut off
from human community and deprived of a cause to serve "is to know/the
anguish of unmeaning." (p. 17) The resolution of his personal dilemma, of
"The still stubborn swing of the heart's pendulum/from passion to opposed
passion," is reported in the Epilogue. In Paradise, Jonah tells the
audience,

. . . knowing the truth of what I am,

content with what I can become,

aspiring, attuned,

I find courage to risk compassion,

confidence to smile at offence to pride,

readiness to do what is mine to do,

and in the doing

to accept the furthest end. (pp. 26, 27)

The message remains cryptic.
The prophet himself again receives the primary focus in Marilyn

Matney's Jonah.24 He is depicted as a likeable escapist idealist, given

more to contemplating the meaning of his actions than to engaging in

 

24 Marilyn Matney, Jonah (n.d., typescript). Written in the
1960's. Since each of the four scenes is paginated independently,
citations will include both scene and page number.

48

them. Jonah B. Amittai25 is first seen in Scene One with a wife and
three children, who both date on him and persist in asking rather pointed
questions about his travel plans, as they assist in hunting for a ticket
to Tarshish which seems mysteriously and consistently replaced by one to
Nineveh. Jonah offers a number of the excuses employed by other dra-
matists for avoiding Nineveh: he doesn't want to be the messenger who
always does God's "dirty work"; he has quite enough to attend to at home;
Yahweh is not the Ninevite God; the people will return to their sins once
the affair is over. He feels he must stand up to a God who insists on
making him "the Prophet-failure," and take a bit of time out to think
over the arduous prophetic vocation. ". . . A man's/Got a right to ask
what it all means." He then rationalizes that his flight nay in actu-
ality be the means of obedience.

A man has to act on

What he believes, no matter what the conflict with God.

It may be God overrules him

But his act still stands. . .

Harm; all: altimeter"

.

Jonah engages in a kind of interior dialectic as he attempts to make
sense of God's expectations and his own responses. But the method is one
of raising extreme and opposing points of view and then dismissing rather
than resolving them, as is particularly in evidence throughout Jonah's

lengthy monologue in the whale in Scene Two.27 Jonah's chief difficulty

and fear in terms of his profession is that such a nfission of prophecy

 

25 The same "modernization" of Jonah ben Amittai is employed by
Wolf Mankowitz in It Should Happen to a Dog. See chapter five, p. 133.

26 This rationalization nay be compared with T. J. Spencer's ver-
sion of doing God's will by running away. See chapter six, p. 157.

27 Matney neither employs a scene on board ship nor makes reference
to Jonah's experience with the sailors.

49

and salvation as one is called upon to undertake . costs part of
you . . ." (Sc. 3, p. 5) After the Ninevites' repentance and the sparing
of their city, however, Jonah returns to the kinds of complaints with
which he began the play. The King's Messengers chide him for feeling
self-pity when he has helped to avert the wholesale slaughter of human
and animal life. Jonah nevertheless declines their invitation to attend
as guest of honor the King's celebration. He bemoans his fate as a
failure and a fool, and iterates his conviction that the Ninevites'
repentance will soon wear off.

A nod in the direction of relevance to contemporary social and
political circumstances is achieved primarily through the several abrupt
appearances of Jonah's son David. The boy's presence in the whale is
left unexplained in Scene Two. In Scene Three, however, Jonah describes
his own deliverance from the whale in terms of a violent explosion from
which ". . . I, only I am escaped to tell you." Lamenting the loss of
his son, Jonah suddenly introduces two more recent, man-made cataclysms:
"Hiroshima./Nineveh./Nagasaki./The big three." (Sc. 3, p. 2) At the
beginning of Scene Three Matney suggests the New Testament motif of Jesus
as a sign more potent for his generation than Jonah for his. ". . . You
men don't know it, but/You'll rise up and condemn the generation/Who gets
the Angels." (Sc. 3, p. 1)28 If the Ninevites are to be a "sign" for
those responsible for dropping atomic bombs, however, Matney does not
clarify the relationship between the ancient Assyrian and the modern
Japanese cities. There occurs in Scene Four a reference to ". . . a Jew

in a/Prison camp . . ." (Sc. 4, p. 2) But again this theme is not

 

23 See Luke 11:29-32.

50
developed.29 Finally, after Jonah's tent (rather than a plant) is destroyed,
David appears, dressed in play angel garb. In the highly sentimentalized
closing scene, David helps Jonah perceive the lesson that, indeed, God
has made everything, from tents to Ninevites. Jonah and his son together
chant: ‘

We didn't make the whale. God did.

We didn't make the tent. God did.

We didn't make the city. God did.

We didn't make the world. God did. (Sc. 4, p. 10)

The verse form generally employed in Matney's Jonah is iambic, but
with no standard number of feet in a line. In the dialogue contemporary
colloquialisms are mixed with Biblical-sounding language. For example,
after delivering his edict in a close paraphrase of the proclamation in
Jonah 3:7-9, the King tells Jonah, "I dig your message, son." (Sc. 3,

p. 6) Various anachronisms are sprinkled throughout the text. These nay
amount to no more, for instance, than a brief reference to "cars."
(Sc. 2, p. 2) Other anachronisms are extended, such as the awkward:
JONAH (shouting): People of Nineveh. listen
To the word of the Lord!
I bring you good tidings of great . . .
(embarrassed, fumbling with notes and in pocket)
No, no, wrong speech . . . didn't quite make the
Angel corps this year
A MAN: Whatsamatter, buddy? Aren't you a little
Ahead of yourself? We don't rate that message
For say, 800 years, right? (Sc. 3, p. 1)
The exchange follows a set of "stage directions" concerning Jonah's
manner of arrival in Nineveh which are neither explicated nor justified

in the scene. Finally, the interpretive ideas raised in the course of

the play are unfulfilled because of the nanner in which Jonah and other

 

29 Each of these ideas is explored in depth in Guenter Rutenborn's
The Sign of’Jonah, on which see chapter six, pp. 169-178.

51
characters make a point and then appear to have their attention diverted
from pursuing it. The persons of the drama thus appear rather distant
from their thoughts.

Just as several plays in the present group reveal tendencies toward
the more fully "interpretive" or "adaptive" dramas to be considered in
later chapters, so others contain "moral-lesson" elements which place
them closer to the didactic treatments to be.discussed in chapter four.

Sarah Walton Miller's Jonah appears in the "Bible Teaching" section
of her Acting Out the Truth: Dramatic Features for Group Worship.30 The
device of the "speech choir“ is employed frequently in Miller's playlets.
In Jonah the Chief Storyteller and l'mixedgroup" of Storytellers, three
of whom become the Captain and two Sailors for the ship scene, comprise
the entire cast of characters aside from Jonah himself. Much of the
story is narrated by the Storytellers. While certain simple properties--
such as an urn and small pieces of wood for the casting of the lots--are
called for, and some physical action is indicated, at a number of points
Jonah has no clear action or business in which to engage during choral
speeches.

The brief dramatization opens with Jonah's call to go to Nineveh.
Within four lines Jonah is boarding the ship bound for Tarshish. Dia-
logue between Jonah and the seamen moves rapidly through the boarding,
the storm, the casting of the lots, Jonah's confession that he is at
fault, and the descent into the sea. The last incident is narrated, with

Jonah remaining on stage, rather than portrayed. The sailors pray to

 

30 Sarah Walton Miller, Jonah in Acting Out the Truth: Dramatic
Features for Group Worship (Nashville: Broadman, 1961), pp. 77-83. In
her Foreword, p. v, Miller makes clear that her short dramas are inten-
ded for use by church groups on occasions other than that of the formal
worship service.

52

Jonah's God, without, however, any allusion to their conversion. There
is no real Nineveh scene, with both the whale and the Ninevite episodes
presented narratively. Jonah's initial reason for refusing obedience is
that the task is ". . . a thankless effort." (p. 78) After the sparing
of the city Jonah argues that he knew God would revoke his decision and
make Jonah the fool. Then Jonah allows himself the hope that Nineveh nay
yet be destroyed. This attitude is seen to provide a specific motivation
for the lesson of the plant, since thereby ". . . God knew that Jonah's
heart was still hard and his spirit unforgiving." (p. 82)

The point for the audience of the telling of the story is no more
than suggested, by the Chief Storyteller:

Did Jonah feel shame for his hardness of heart? Was he big enough

to admit he was wrong? The chronicle doesn't tell. But, perhaps

the answer is to be found . . . in your own life. (p. 82)

In a later, expanded version of Jonah, Miller emphasizes the "les-
son" of the story as obedience to God. As with the other plays in her
Bible Dramas for Older Boys and Girls, however, the open-ended conclusion
of The Man Who Said No to God is intended to lead into discussion; and
the application of the play's "moral" is to be discovered by the audience
rather than specified by the dramatist.31

(JONAH closes and freezes. The STORYTELLERS look at JONAH
a moment, then come center, concealing him, except No. l.)

STORYTELLERS (except 1): Well, That's our story.
NO. 1 (puzzledL joining them): Wait. What was the ending?
STORYTELLERS: Oh, it is still going on. Again and again. People

'running away from God. A lot of us are Jonah. We are still
working on the problem.

 

31 Sarah Walton Miller, The Man Who Said No to God, in Bible Dramas
for Older Boys and Girls (Nashville: Broadman, 1970), pp. 47—62.

53

No. 1: Will we find the ending?

STORYTELLERS: Who knOWS? (Indicating audience) Ask them. (p. 61)
Seven "Questions for Talking" are supplied following this closing dia-
logue.

The Man Who Said No to God is the least "realistic" of the plays in
this later volume of'Miller‘s, containing dramas ". . . written for boys
and girls in the eleven- to fourteen-year-old age range."32 _Again, Jonah
and eight Storytellers make up the cast, and it is the only play in this
collection to retain the device of a chorus. The flexibility and flow of
the earlier Jonah is retained, with the chorus, however, replacing less
of the action with straight narration. An opening narrative by the
chorus establishes the background concerning Jonah, his home village of
Gath-hepher, and the moral state of the city of Nineveh. There follows
the brief scene in which Jonah hears the voice of God. A short scene
within the fish is enacted, as well as a full Ninevite episode with
Storytellers playing the parts of that city's citizens. Miller begins
this scene with dishonest businesswomen attempting to sell their wares.
Jonah addresses his message of doom not only to the Ninevites on stage
but to the audience as well. Jonah's initial disobedience is motivated
by fear. Later, when the Ninevites at first refuse to heed him, he
complains, "I knew all the time they wouldn't listen." (p. 56) When the
city is spared and he feels he has been made a fool, Jonah retires
angrily to keep watch. Again motivation is provided for Jonah's action,
in his belief that after all ". . . they won't hold out." (p. 60) The

episode of the shade-producing plant is in this version seen, with Story-

 

32 Miller, Bible Dramas, Foreword, p. v.

54
tellers pantomiming the gourd vine and the cutworm. The play then moves
quickly to the Storytellers' final line before the "conclusion" is handed
to the audience: "You would have me destroy a hundred and twenty thousand
people who didn't know right from wrong? Why, Jonah?" (p. 61)

Lawrence Waddy's Jonah is a musical version of the main events of
the Biblical account, with certain omissions--of the whale scene with
Jonah's prayer for deliverance, for instance, and of the gourd incident--
to facilitate staging and assist in the modernizing of characters and
events.33 The result is an essentially "straight" rendering of the Jonah
narrative with, however, a moral drawn at the drama's conclusion to the
effect that we should all be obedient to God. Waddy here employs a
particular homiletic method wherein a Biblical story is recited, with the
exclusion of those details considered unnecessary to the point to be
made, to the end of deriving from that story a practical and applicable

truth.

 

33 Lawrence Waddy, Jonah, 'in Drama in Worship (New York; Ramsey, NJ;
Toronto: Paulist, 1978), Pp. 121-131. An earlier and somewhat shorter
version of Jonah (1966, typescript) was written in 1962, first produced
on television by the BBC in late 1964, and as a stage performance at the
Bishop's School in La Jolla, California, in 1964 and 1975. (Production
information in letter of September 28, 1978, from the playwright to the
present writer.) In the earlier version Jonah is identified as ". . . a
minister or rabbi" (p. 2), whereas in the later version he has become
"Pastor Jonah." The earlier version lacks the Narrator's prose introduction
of the Jonah family, beginning rather with the "You can't keep running
away, Jonah" song. In the later version Jonah's son's name has been
changed from Samuel to Amittai allowing the Narrator's comment: "That was
his grandfather's name, so he's stuck with it." (p. 123) While the
original version lacks any reference to the fish, the published version
includes a brief narrator's description of the incident. The introduction
to the Ninevites through the song of the city's Boosters is an addition
to the later version. The earlier version ends with Jonah and Wife
singing an "I want to serve him" song and exchanging greetings with the
Ninevites. In the later version the "greeting" business is omitted, and
the song is delivered by Jonah, his family, and the chorus.

 

55

Like Mlller, Waddy makes use of a chorus, from which emerge both the
sailors and the Ninevites. He also provides a Narrator who, though not a
member of the chorus, on occasion sings with them. Waddy chooses the
scenes with the most evident potential for action, and the short play
moves fairly rapidly. The Narrator's speeches, on the other hand,
often in the form of commentary not connected with the action, tend to
slow the pace. This is particularly true when the Narrator quotes sec-
tions of the Biblical book of Jonah, contrasting markedly in style with
the language of the lyrics, dialogue, and non-Biblical narration. The
Narrator speaks for God, with the unaccountable exception of one instance
in which a separate "Voice of God" is specified (p. 128).

The characters of Waddy's Jonah are to appear in modern dress. The
colloquial tone and the ironic pointing of contemporary parallels to
Jonah are established in the Narrator's opening comments. He begins:

Hello! I'd like you to meet this family. They're nice
people, and they get along well with each other, as families go.

, The man of the house, over there, is Pastor Jonah. He has one
of the best attended churches here in Pleasantville-by-the-Sea:
what you could call a fashionable church. But don't mfisunderstand
me. Jonah may be a trifle too comfortable, and just a bit of a
snob, but he works hard, visits his people, both rich and poor,
watches over the sick, and preaches a good sermon . . . you see,
Jonah is a Prophet. Week by week, he denounces things: Red China,
foreign aid, long-haired young criminals, too much welfare--he's
great on all of those. Most of all the Ninevites. He can't stand
Nineveh: it gets under his skin. (pp. 122-123)

Jonah's reluctance to go to Nineveh, nevertheless, is the result of his
and his family's complacency and home comfort.

Following his attempt to escape on the ship-~called, with prophetic
irony, the Swallow--Jonah arrives in Nineveh. The Ninevite Boosters'
song is again a commentary on contemporary civilization, with its Chamber

of Commerce, supermarkets, movies, smog, inflation, scandal in government,

56
"And plenty of credit, and easy financing . . ." (pp. 128-129) The song
which concludes the drama perhaps is intended to imply that the ". . . richer
and better living/[which] Is all that I have to give" is in opposition or
contrast to that style of living praised by the Boosters. The emphasis,
however, is on individual service and obedience.

I want to serve Him

Body and soul,
Because I came to Him empty

And He made me whole.
I want to give Him

All that's best of me,
Because I was a prisoner

And he set:me free. (p. 131)

A survey of this first group of "Jonah" plays suggests that as the
author's purpose is more strictly and simply to "tell the story" the
less interesting the drama is likely to be. The interest in John
Ritchie's The Life of'Jonah, the Prophet, for example, derives from the
playwright's extra-Biblical material and cultural perspective. Of the
plays here examined, Madeleine L'Engle's The Journey with Jonah seems
most worthy of theatrical attention. And, as has been noted, L'Engle
avoids a mere retelling of the plot of Jonah in favor of recasting the
themes of the Biblical source in a manner intended to communicate with

and entertain a particular audience.

CHAPTER THREE

Interpretive Treatments of Jonah

A few of the "Jonah" dramatists have sought primarily to interpret
the Biblical story. The intent of these writers is to clarify a parti-
cular understanding of the book itself, rather than to present an ethical
or moral lesson for the audience as in the didactic treatments to be
examined in chapter four, or to employ the Jonah narrative as a vehicle
for engaging the audience with certain contemporary ideas or issues as in
the "adaptive" treatments to be examined in chapter six.

The earliest of such interpretive dramatizations is L. V. Snowman's
A Second Chapter of "Jonah," published in 1924.1 Though not written for
performance, the play--a dialogue between Jonah and Leviathan, with
"stage directions" describing several visions--illustrates the degree to
which extra-Biblical material may be employed in order that the inter-
pretation be established. In an opening note Snowman explains that
Jonah's prayer from inside the fish

. . . has always caused difficulty to the critics, for it appears

to be a selection of verses from Psalms which, instead of forming a

prayer for deliverance, is a thanksgiving by a man who has been

saved from great peril. The rabbis, too, it would appear, were not
easy in their mind as to the exact significance of this chapter,

and a considerable store of Midrash has been accumulated round this

portion of the story of Jonah. These sources have been drawn upon
in fashioning the framework of the following scene . . .

 

1 L[eonard] V[ictor] Snowman, A Second Chapter of'"Jonah" in The
Jewish Chronicle (London): September 25, 1924, pp. 26-28.

2 Ibid., p. 26. Edwin M. Good presents the now common view that
the psalm of Jonah 2:2-9 is a later insertion in "Jonah: The Absurdity
of God," in Irony in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1965), p. 39. T. Henshaw exemplifies the view that Jonah's prayer is

57

58
The conclusion to which Snowman comes to justify Jonah's giving

thanks for deliverance while yet entombed beneath the sea is that Jonah

 

not only a later addition but inappropriate to its context. Henshaw,

p. 287. See Henshaw for citation of the prayer's relation to various
passages from the Psalms. Parallels are also listed in Mauchline, p. 43.
Elias Bickerman suggests that the psalm in question was already in circu-
lation, under Jonah's name, at the time the book was written. Like
Snowman, Bickerman proposes that the prayer is not for deliverance but,
as Jerome had noted, ". . . a thanksgiving for grace already granted."

In the Greek past tense was not used in order to avoid the apparent
anomoly. At the end of the first century Josephus accepted the already
current interpretation that the prayer was actually offered by Jonah
after his deposition on shore. A generation earlier Philo of Alexandria
had introduced the idea of the prayer as a supplication; and in the
medieval Hebrew paraphrase Jonah ". . . prays to be restored to life."
Bickerman, p. 12. D. E. Hart-Davies, arguing the thanksgiving motif,
offers an extensive analysis of Jonah's prayer on pp. 75-79. The most
comprehensive study of the psalm is George M. Landes' "The Kerygma of the
Book of Jonah: The Contextual Treatment of the Jonah Psalm,“ Interpret-
ation, vol. 21 (1967), pp. 3-31.

Herbert Weisinger finds a resolution to the matter in that

. the prayer of Jonah reveals how God and man by their actions
in concert resolve the dilemma involved in the relationship between
God's universal plan on the one hand and man's individual will on
the other. . .

It should be noted that all but the final vision (that of the pearl of
illumination) in Snowman's play are derived from the imagery of the Jonah
psalm. Of interest in terms of Snowman's third vision (see below,

p. 59) is Weisinger's further interpretation of the passage:

Salvation is indeed of the Lord, but Jonah must look to the holy
temple and must remember the Lord of his own free will; then sal-
vation is of the Lord. Here, in this brief prayer of Jonah, are the
very libretto and imagery . . . of the myth and ritual pattern of
the ancient Near East: the God deflated in combat & submerged in the
waves of death, humiliated and plunged into the pit of hell, yet
when he reaches the nether bottoms, then is he resurrected, but now
how transformed, how risen in spiritual significance, is the pat-
tern, and this is the very epitome of the Hebrew contribution to the
myth and ritual patterns of the ancient Near East.

Herbert Weisinger, Tragedy & the Paradox of'the Fortunate Fall (E. Lansing,
MI: Michigan State College, 1953), pp. 173-174. In terms of other Old
Testament parallels in Jonah, Leslie C. Allen discusses the dependence of
various verses of Jonah upon other prophetic writings, and cites in
chapters three and four the ". . . apparent use of Jeremiah 18 and Joel

2." Allen, pp. 177, 186. B. Davie Napier lists three verses in Jonah
specifically dependent on verses in Joel, two of which are also cited by
Henshaw. Napier, P. 366; Henshaw, p. 285.

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59

 

has asked to be thrown from the ship in order through death to be united
with God. While offering thanks for being allowed such a death, however,
Jonah realizes suddenly that he appears to be still alive. Although

"Leviathan is seen advancing through the darkness, since he is "a
spirit" Jonah cannot see him. Leviathan objects to Jonah's present
desire for unity with God with his repeated ". . . no man shall die
before he has lived." What is meant by the living which Jonah has not
yet accomplished Leviathan describes in a series of questions:

If every man desired this unity, all creatures would have to die.

Have you shared your crust with the orphan, so that in sharing it

you have shared its orphanhood? Have you covered the threadbare

wanderer with garments and, seeing his lonely voyaging, yourself
become an outcast vagabond? Have you restored the straying beast
of burden to its master or life to the dying warrior? Have you
given of your blood to build a generation to succeed you? Women
may travail time and again so that you may be one. And all the
other issue of her loins--is not each a unity? They live; cannot

you live with them? (p. 26)

Leviathan causes Jonah to see a series of visions. The first is of
dead Egyptian horses and riders at the bottom of the Red Sea. They were
destroyed that the Hebrews might know freedom; similarly the Ninevites
need to be set free from the spiritual bondage which is their lot until
they too know the God of Israel. Jonah insists that he should work only
on behalf of Israel, and that since his people are free they do not
require his offices. The second vision is of waves breaking against
pillars, signifying:

. . . a story of Israel . . . The whole earth is watered by these

waves, and servants of Israel must serve even as the waves.

(9. 27)

The third vision is of a rock, the foundation of seven mountains above
which stands a holy temple. On the rock men and children in chains
endeavor to offer prayers to a God who will not listen. Jonah now deter-

mines to live, and to return once again to serve the Israelites. But a

60
fourth vision, of a pearl illuminating that rock supporting a humanity in
anguish, becomes Jonah's "conscience" impelling him to fulfill his
mission to Nineveh. Thus his sojourn in the depths of the sea serves to
convince Jonah of the universality of his God, and of the servanthood of
Israel.

Laurence Housman approaches the subject through a telling of the
events of the Biblical book of Jonah much in the manner of the “straight"
versions discussed in chapter two. His interest, nevertheless, is in
rescuing the tale from its superstitious or magical elements so that it
might be palatable to modern sensibilities. In his preface to Palestine
Plays Housman stresses that in his Biblical dramas he has taken care to
omit references to miracles. Such recorded occurrences the playwright
regards as conceits of the Israelites who were

. . thoroughly spoiled children. Having decided that they were

"the Chosen People," they wrote their history in terms of tribal

megalomania; and, as a consequence, ostentation and favouritism

became divine attributes; and their extravagant taste for mira-
culous intervention, often on quite trivial occasions, has obscured
the meaning and lessgned the spiritual value of many a beautiful

Old Testament story.

Consequently, while his one-act, five-scene The Burden of'Nineveh
follows the outline of the Biblical book of Jonah, Housman dispenses with

both fish and angel.4 Even without the fish, Jonah's rescue seems not so

far removed from the miraculous.

 

3 Laurence Housman, Palestine Plays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1942),
pp. 5-6. See Roston's discussion of Housman's demythologizing attitude
in these plays, including the Jonah dramatization. pp. 286—288.‘ See
also Weales, pp. 131-134.

4 Laurence Housman, The Burden of Nineveh, in Palestine Plays,
pp. 129-146.

.1e'

61

So they took and made ready to cast me forth into the sea. But
because they wished not my death, they made a cross-beam of wood,
and bound me to it, and therewith they cast me from the ship

. . And the raging of the sea was round me, and the roaring of
its waves went over me. But the beam bore me up through the midst
of it; and the Hand of the Lord held me so that I did not die.
Three days it bore me; three days I was without food or water, yet
my life stayed in me, and my strength failed not. (p. 135)

The "fish story" comes to Jonah as he preaches to the Ninevites, who are
disinclined to accept his utterances until they hear of the marvel of a
man's living three days inside a fish. Afterwards, when Jonah asks why
prophets must tell lies in order to impart the truth, his friend Shemmel
replies:

Not lies, Jonah . . . You do not tell the truth to a child as you
do to a wise man; for he would not understand it. Even so has God
spoken in parables . . . (p. 142) _

The parable in this instance is explained by Shemmel:

The great Fish that swallowed you was the power of God and His
righteousness, and His great mercy and loving-kindness to a people
that knew not Him, and a Nation that would not come unto Him. Aye,
maybe, as you say, Nineveh will return to her sins, and again do
wickedly. And a day will come, and Nineveh will perish from the
face of the earth and be only a name. But the story of Nineveh
will be told for ever--so that God's mercy to sinners may be known
among men. (PP. 143-144)

Housman further takes pains to provide an explanation of the comnon

reference to Jonah's "whale,' in Shemmel's prediction that for those who

will pass on the tale . a whale is the only thing they know big
enough." (p. 143)5 Shemmel considers Jonah's insistence on the forty
days left to Nineveh a questionable interpretation of God's message,
since ". . . when the Lord says 'days,‘ sometimes it has meant years--

even thousands of years . . ." (p. 141)

 

5 Edwin M. Good points out that while the Biblical text refers to
a "big fish," the "whale" tradition is likely to be fairly old. Good,
p. 46. Bickerman considers this tradition to have originated in the
middle ages. Bickerman, p. 11.

62

The introduction of older fellow-prophet Shemmel enables Housman to
avoid the angel as a character, and to employ Shemmel throughout the play
as convenient foil and raisonneur. In the first scene Shemmel talks with
Jonah as the latter is packing for his flight. When Jonah complains that
the Ninevites are not the people of the Israelite God, Shemmel replies
that because the Ninevites do not know this God is no doubt why Jonah is
being sent to them. Here Housman hints at the common universalist view
of the book of Jonah. The two prophets debate the function of pr0phecy,
Jonah maintaining that when no one will listen it is pointless to speak
the truth, and Shemmel that the recording of such prophecy will be its
justification. "It takes long for man to learn God's ways; but he will
learn them some day." (p. 130)

In Scene Two, three months later, Jonah returns to tell Shemmel of
his adventure at sea and his new resolve to go to Nineveh. Housman thus
avoids the theatrical as well as theological difficulty in presenting the
shipboard scene as given in the Biblical source. Shemmel on this occa-
sion distinguishes between two types of prophets: the preacher, such as
Jonah, and the "counsellor," such as himself. Shemmel then accompanies
Jonah to Nineveh, so that Housman can make use of only two characters
from beginning to end of his drama, Shemmel continuing to discuss with
his companion the events as they occur. In Scene Three the voices of a
crowd are heard, as the Ninevites at first react in violent protest to
Jonah's proclamation of their destruction. In Scene Four Housman, like
many of the "Jonah" dramatists, follows the precedent of the Biblical
source in having Jonah present his rationale for having fled from God at
this point in the story rather than at the time he actually departed for

Joppa and Tarshish. "Surely this is why I fled from the Lord, because

63
I feared that He would not keep His Word." (p. 143) In Scene Five
Shemnel, in place of an angel, delivers the "lesson," quoted from Jonah
4:10-11. In his final line Shemmel indicates that he will be the author
of the written story of Jonah and Nineveh.

Housman's tendency to a rational view of Jonah extends to an empha—
sis on the psychological or motivational aspects of the prophet's behav-
ior. Jonah explains to Shemmel, for example, that he had a logical
purpose in asking to be thrown off the ship. "Then I saw the way straight
before me, and the Lord's will made plain; for I said to myself--'now
surely, if I am to perish, then has the Lord not called ne; but if He
save me, then He has called me to go and prophesy to Nineveh.'“ (pp. 134-
135) After the experience of near-death and then rescue at sea Jonah is
emotionally prepared to carry out the Ninevite mission. He appears truly
fearless as the citizens of that city rage and throw stones at him. As
soon as he has carried out his commission, however, his vanity asserts
itself.

JONAH: Well? What d'you think of that, Shemmel? Did I speak the
word of the Lord as it should be spoken?

SHEMMEL: Where are they going, Jonah?
JONAH: To their temples, to pray-~that their gods may save them.
But if the Lord hath spoken by me, He shall not hear them.
(pp. 139-140)
Jonah has set himself up to be made the object of the lesson of the
withered gourd-plant and the saved city.
All of the incidents of the Biblical book are included in Brian

Tunstall's Jonah.5 But Tunstall has added a good deal of material of

 

5 Brian Tunstall, Jonah (n.d., typescript). Received in the
library of the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain in 1972.

64
his own, from outside the Biblical narrative, including frequent refer-
ences to the scholarly commentary on various details of the book of
Jonah. Like Housman, Tunstall warns against a literal interpretation of
the Biblical account; unlike Housman, he argues that the book's point of
view is to some extent humorous. Early in the play the Author claims
that the theologians ". . . took the whale story too literally" and that
". . . in the course of pointing a moral I was having a bit of fun."
(p. 4) In the conclusion the Redactor reiterates:

And the whole story is told not solemnly but with considerable wit

and with a succession of fantastic and impossible incidents piled

on one another, just to make us realize that this is pure romance,

as Churchill might have put it, "grim and gay." (p. 24)

Tunstall extends the principle of a humorous approach to Jonah to a
gentle mockery of much of the Biblical scholarship he cites. He ridi-
cules, for instance, the debate over the kind of fish which could swallow
a man, and whether Jonah was sheltered by a gourd or castor oil plant.
As an example of visual humor, Tunstall has the plant played by a girl
with a parasol. When he omits the kidding, on the other hand, as when
the size of Nineveh is debated, the playwright's use of scholarly com-
mentators is itself simply pedantic. Tunstall occasionally raises the
question of the "reality" of the character as opposed to the actor. For
example, when the Author enters he is accosted by the First Critic.

FIRST CRITIC: So you wrote Jonah.

AUTHOR: Well, yes, though in point of fact--

FIRST CRITIC: Stop that double talk about point of fact. Did you
write Jonah or did you not?

AUTHOR: I am the actor whose business it is to impersonate the
author of Jonah, but as no one knows who the author was, I am
no more than an actor speaking the part which the author of
this play has put into my mouth.

FIRST CRITIC: Just what I suspected, you're bogus.

65
AUTHOR: Not at all. And what about you? (p. 2)7

Tunstall includes no stage directions in his script. It is obvious,
however, that the action of the play shifts between on-stage characters
and observers. There is occasional interchange between the two sets of
characters, as when Jonah responds to the Explanator. Jonah and the King
of Nineveh also shift suddenly from speaking within the scene to nar-
rating the action. Though the performance's observers have supplied
necessary exposition, Jonah upon his entrance takes time to explain to
the audience again who he is. The characters existing outside the
action--three Critics, Author, Explanator. Redactor--are numerous to a
point of possible confusion. Nor is the function of an "explanator" or a
"redactor" explained to those uninitiated to these terms. Tunstall does
not make clear why the Third Critic, entering late in the play, is
necessary. Midway through the play William Jennings Bryan appears
briefly to mention that ". . . in the year 1925, I testified that I was
convinced the whale swallowed Jonah and I went on to say that if the
Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale I would have believed that
also.“ (p. 15) Off-stage voices, including that of God (rendered by
Tunstall in the Hebrew consonants YHWH), are employed. An entire scene
is played with Jonah alone on stage preaching to the Ninevites while the
Ninevites are heard reacting to him from off-stage.

Tunstall's thematic interests, other than his parading of scholarly
criticism, are revealed in the action of Jonah. In an apparent reference

to the story of Jonah in relation to mythic archetype. the Author

 

7 Such devices as making fun of Biblical as well as classical
scholarship and actors questioning the roles they are playing are
employed by Guenter Rutenborn in his The Sign of’Jonah, discussed in
chapter six. In Rutenborn's drama the devices are much more integral to
both plot and theatrical style.

 

66
states:
The idea of the fish was that Jonah should suffer a kind of tem-

porary death or divine imprisonment and with it a mystical cleans-
lng and purging. (p. 15)8

 

8 Joseph Campbell discusses "The Belly of the Whale" in terms of
the symbolism of death and rebirth. He cites Eskimo, Zulu, Irish,
German, Polynesian, and Greek versions of the myth. The Hero with a
Thousand Faces (New York: Meridian, 1956), pp. 90-95. Mircea Eliade
demonstrates the cultic significance and cultural pervasiveness of the
practice of entering the monster's belly in rites of initiation into
adulthood. The symbolism is that of death and rebirth. Eliade, Birth
and.Pebirth: The Religious Meanings of'Initiation in Human Culture,
trans. Willard R. Trask, Benjamin Nelson, gen. ed., The Library of
Religion and Culture (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 35-37
and passim. A popularization of this rite and myth occurs in the story
of Pinocchio, whose experience in the whale's belly marks his transition
from wooden puppet to real boy. Further reference to Jonah in the fish
as mythic archetype will be found in Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God:
Creative Mythology (New York: Viking, Compass Book, 1968), p. 13. See
also John Paterson, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: Studies
Historical, Religious, and E ository in the Hebrew Prophets (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1954 , p. 281; Bickerman, p. 11; and M. M.
Kalisch, Bible Studies: Part II: The Book of’Jonah (London: Longmans,
Green, 1878), pp. 176-183. Kalisch also calls attention to Mohammedan
legends concerning Jonah, including his being swallowed by the fish.
Kalisch, pp. 288-290. Hans Walter Wolff mentions Greek and Indian
parallels to Jonah and suggests that ". . . our narrator is probably
making use of material which was being passed around the-port city of
Jaffa as a fable . . ." Wolff, "Jonah--The Messenger Who Obeyed,"

p. 86. E. Henderson suggests possible pagan origins for the myth in his
The Book of’the Twelve Minor Prophets, Translated from the Original
Hebrew. With a Commentary, Critical, Philological, & Exegetical (Andover:
Warren F. Draper, 1859), p. 197. E. B. Pusey recounts a number of pagan
tales whose linking with the Jonah story he considers absurd. Pusey,
pp. 389-392. John Mauchline suggests that the mythic importance of the
sea as the realm of death may be of primary significance in the Jonah
narrative, in which case ". . . the fish is simply the means used by God
to restore Jonah to land." Mauchline, p. 43.

Carl Jung explores the notion of the whale as a symbol for the womb, the
return to which may be understood as a means of enlightenment. Entry
into the whale, that is, is to be viewed as making direct contact with
the "collective unconscious." In terms of individual psychology, the
"'Jonah and the Whale' complex" occurs at a presexual, nutritive and
oral-exploratory stage of development. C[arl] GEustav] Jung, Symbols of
Transformation: An Analysis cf the Prelude to a case of'Schizophrenia,
trans. R. F. C. Hull, The collected works, vol. 5 (New York: Pantheon,
Bollingen Series 20, 1951), pp. 330, 408, 419. See Jolande Jacobi's
commentary on Jung's interpretation in Complex/Archetype/Symbol in the
Psychology of'C. G. Jung, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Pantheon,

67
As the play opens two Critics are asking the Explanator what is going on.
The Explanator replies that they are about to see ". . . the story of a
spiritual pilgrimage . . ." and identifies the protagonist, Jonah, as
" . an anti-prophet." (p. 1) Jonah before fleeing to Joppa expresses

his fear that the Ninevites may actually repent. On the same grounds

later, after the city has been spared, he justifies his anger.9 According to

 

Bollingen Series 57, 1959). pp. 155-156, 177, 183. Some of Jung's

imagery is employed in Jean-Paul de Dadelsen's poem Jonah, trans. Edward
Lucie-Smith (London: Rapp and Carroll, 1967). The womb metaphor seems
implied in Paul Goodman's play Jonah in the protagonist's line from
within the fish: "Surely if a man could sleep, he could sleep here, in
this warm, wet, soft and swaying interior." In The Young Disciple,
Faustina, Jonah: Three Plays (New York: Random House, 1945, 1961, 1965),
p. 157. See also Arthur Koestler, “The Belly of the Whale," in The Act
of’Creation (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 358-365. From a psychoanalytic
point of view, Erich Fromm discusses Jonah as an example ". . . of the
function of the universal symbol . . ." in The Forgotten Language: An
Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths (New
York: Grove, Evergreen Book, 1951), PP. 20-23. Fromm also employs the
Jonah story as a symbolic representation of "productive love" in Man for
Himselft An Inqui into the Psychology of’Bthics (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett,
Premier Book, 1947 , pp. 104-5. Goodwin Watson discusses the universal
experience of being "in the whale" and "free again" in "A Psychologist's
View of Religious Symbols," in Religious symbolism, ed. F. Ernest Johnson
(New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies, 1955), pp. 121-
122.

A few scholars have discussed the mythic interpretation of Jonah more
strictly within the confines of a Judeo-Christian frame of reference.
Marion A. Fairman in "In the Belly of the Fish" perceives Jonah's exper-
ience as a metaphor for the individual's alienation from God, in Bib-
lical Patterns in Modern Literature (Cleveland: Dillon/Liederbach,
1972), pp. 67-83. (Fairman's own dramatization of Jonah is discussed in
chapter four, pp. Ill-114.) Northrop Frye in "Archetypal Criticism:
Theory of Myths'l examines the several appearances of "leviathan" in the
Old Testament, and notes the relationship of Jonah to Christ as monster-
slayer, in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (New York: Atheneum, 1957),
pp. 189-192. In this latter connection see also Cyril C. Richardson's
identification of the fish as the "sign of Jonah" in early Christian
symbolic art, in "The Foundations of Christian Symbolism," in F. Ernest
Johnson, p. 8. Olov Hartman's "Jonah" play, Prophet and Carpenter, makes
use of both the belly of the fish as the kingdom of death and Jonah as a
type of Christ. This drama is discussed in chapter seven.

9 Tunstall's resolution of any inconsistency between Jonah's
"before" and "after" excuses is thus similar to that of Jerome Bayer,
whose Jonah wishes in both instances to see the Ninevites damned. See
the discussion above of Pity for the Gourd, p. 45.

68

the Redactor,
Jonah is not just to be written off because of his faults. He
offered his life for the ship's company, without any hint of com-
pulsion.10
Jonah's redeeming qualities are nevertheless insufficient, since at
Nineveh ". . . he hoped to see his prophecy fulfilled. But he had no
right to see this happen." (p. 23) The Explanator then introduces
another perspective, in stressing God's use of Jonah's actions both
praiseworthy and reprehensible.
Early in the play the Explanator states that Jonah
. couldn't understand that if the Lord God of Israel was the
only God and that he was supreme throughout the whole world, He
couldn't be just the religious private property of the Jews and the
destroyer of all the heathen nations. (p. 2)
The Author then indicates that the universalist lesson directed at Israel
in the book of Jonah
. . is meant to apply to everyman at any time in History, since
it relates to man's refusal to accept God's universal compassion
for all men everwhere and always. (p. 3)
On board ship, the mariners' lengthy prayer for deliverance repeats as
its motif that God is universally the creator and sustainer. In sum-
marizing the lesson to be learned from the adventures of Jonah, Tunstall
echoes L. V. Snowman's double theme of the universal nature of God and
Israel's role as a servant. Tunstall's Redactor, however, makes the

point in a negative context rather than with Snowman's more positive,

forward-looking vision.

 

10 Compare Snowman's similar observation, in the words of Levia-
than: "The storm came circling round your ship; there was some good in
your heart; you felt that men should not die for the sins of others."
Snowman, A Second Chapter of'"Jonah," p. 28.

69

Jonah stands for the extreme militant yet inward looking attitude

of Judaism after the exile and restoration. According to this

attitude Israel could never forgive her persecutors and had no

mission; no sense of being God's instrument for a universal pur-
pose.
This view is then brought to bear on later generations, since “Every
age has its Jonah," and the audience is reminded of the difficulty which
Peter and his fellow apostles had initially in carrying the Christian
message to the Gentiles (p. 22). But then the focus shifts again to
the idea of God's ability to use all human actions to his purpose, as the
Author states that it was
. .my idea to show people how unaccountable God sometimes seems
to us and how strange are the ways in which he uses even those of

his servants who seem to be the most unprofitable. "God moves in a

mysterious way his wonders to perform."

And that lead-in prepares for the concluding singing of the hymn, with
the Author mentioning that it was written by William Cowper, of whom the
Third Critic asks: "Didn't he die mad?" (p. 24)

The attempt in dramatic form to interpret a Biblical book in the
context of its own historical and literary setting appears an unusual and
relatively minor theatrical endeavor. Snowman's work is not intended for
the stage; and while his thesis finds support among Biblical scholars,
his images are perhaps too esoteric for effective dramatic impact.
Housman's exposition is based on his personal and cultural bias; in his
treatment the story is more distorted than illumined. Tunstall's use of
Biblical scholarship is more playful than serious, and in any case the
author seems at pains to avoid drawing conclusions. The drama may not

be, after all, the most convenient form for the conducting of Biblical

exegesis.

CHAPTER FOUR

Didactic Treatments of Jonah

Dramatizations of the Jonah story for frankly didactic purpose
emphasize one or more "moral lessons" which are overtly stated for the
instruction of the audience. A play in this category may be intended to
"inspire" as well as to instruct, and, indeed, the inspirational purpose
may take precedence over the more objective instructional one. Of the
ten dramas in the present group, two in particular employ "inspirational“
techniques, with Fairman's In the Belly of'the Fish making the more
obvious use of such device. Many Biblical scholars have provided impetus
for a moral-lesson approach to the Jonah narrative, in describing the
Biblical book as ". . . a didactic parable . . ." or a work ". . . probably
to be read as an allegory or a didactic (instructive) poem."1

The line between the "straight" story telling with some moralizing
along the way, and the fully didactic treatment, may at times be dif-
ficult to draw. The dramas by Sarah Walton Miller and Lawrence Waddy
have already been discussed as primarily story-telling but with mor-
alizing tendencies.2 The seventeenth-century dramatic poem The Historie

of'Jonah by Scottish clergyman Zacharie Boyd stands midway

 

1 Allen, p. 186; Mauchline, p. 10. The claims that the book of
Jonah is didactic, generally in terms of a universalist message, are
numerous and no attempt will be made here to list them. As unqualified

an interpretation as any along this line is perhaps that of Paterson, pp. 271-
283.

2 See chapter two, pp. 51-56.
70

71

between the two categories.3 Though homiletic passages are present, the
movement of the piece does not simply lead the reader to an inescapable
lesson. The narrative elements carry their own independent dramatic
interest. The Bistorie of’Jonah resembles in some repects the medieval
English morality play.4 In expositional speeches the various characters
tell the reader about themselves. In the opening monologue the Lord sets
forth his view of the present human condition and his determined course
of action.

I play with kingdomes as with Tenice Balls,

Some I fell downe, and some I raise that falls:

When cities great give ov'r them selves to sin,

They turn like mist uphaled by the sunne:

When strongest holds are battr'd by my strength,

They lose their ground and tumble down at length;

I heape up vengeance upon sinfull souls,

and write their sins upon most ample scrowles.

In great Assyria there's a city rare
Call'd Nineve, that is to say most faire.

This city's wealth do make her wits to waver,
my wrath it burns, what men have force to save her?

. .Yet sith I'm God I slow am to destroy,
Before I strike, some Prophet I'le employ,
To preach to them that they may judgment heare,
Some reck not mercy, but will judgment feare.
. .Ho! Jonah, come and flee with wings of Dove . . . (pp. 3-5)
The drama concludes with a summary statement of the moral lesson to be

derived from the story. The final speech of the Lord's is addressed to

 

3 Zacharie Boyd, The Historie of'Jonah, in Four Poems from "Zion's
Flowers;" 0r, "Christian Poems for Spiritual Edification," ed. Gabriel
Neil (Glasgow: University of Glasgow, 1855), pp. 3—43. Though the exact
date of composition is not known, Neil proposes the period between 1607
and 1626. Introduction, p. 12.

4 The verse form of Boyd's play, however, is the more sophisticated
rhymed iambic pentameter. The single exception, "The Prayer of Jonah in
the Whale's Belly," contains seven feet in each iambic line, reading
rather like a Lewis Carroll verse parody (pp. 23-24).

72
Jonah and consists of the standard (and Biblical) chastising of the
prophet for his bitterness at the leniency shown the Ninevites, with the
customary lack of response from Jonah himself. The speech is followed,
however, by a passage entitled "The Use," with the speaker not indicated.
Here it is made evident that the Ninevites, not Jonah, provide the moral
instruction.5 The reader is admonished to heed the preachers and to rely
on God's mercy while beginning immediately to be purged ". . . from the
rust of sin," for God may not in every case remain patient for as long as
forty days (p. 42).

Otherwise, Boyd's dramatic poem follows successively the Biblical
incidents, and contains no greater degree of "editorializing" than do a
number of the "straight" story-telling dramatizations. It is apparent in
the opening speech by The Lord that the Ninevites knew of God's will, but
had chosen not to follow it, since blasphemy against the divine name is
one of the sins cited. Jonah is then sent in order that they might have
an opportunity to repent. Jonah expresses the familiar objections that
God's prophets have quite enough to do in Israel, that the Ninevites will
not listen to him, and that if they should heed him he will be put to
shame. The sailors, typically, repent upon being convinced that Jonah's
God indeed controls the wind and sea. Jonah's preaching reveals that
injustice as well as hedonism has aroused God's anger. Even though Jonah
will not be pleased with the sparing of Nineveh, he obediently instructs
the King in repentance, to the end that he and his city be saved. An

interesting dramatic tension is introduced in the prophet's outcry

 

5 Lodge and Greene in A Looking—Glass for London and England also
place the moral focus on Nineveh rather than on Jonah. See below, PP.
74-76. A Looking-Class may well have been in performance at the time
Boyd wrote his dramatic poem.

73
against God's fickle change of heart before Jonah stomps off to the
outskirts of Nineveh to await stubbornly the passing of the full forty
days. Jonah's booth is first destroyed, and then the gourd springs up.
Thus when the plant withers, Jonah is deprived of his only shelter
against the sun and wind, and his self-pity is the greater.

Though placed more comfortably in the present category than in any
other, Charles Lee Snider's single-scene "closet drama" Jonah in the
Bible Country is closer than others in the group to the "straight"
versions.6 Didactic in style and intent, the piece nevertheless raises
issues for reflection rather than providing overt moral instruction. The
major events of the Biblical book are followed step-by-step; and the
telling, in fact, when not relieved by the author's attempts at humor,
becomes labored and tedious.

The setting for Jonah in the Bible Country is the Men's Bible Class
of the Benwood Baptist church in the Carolinas. The Teacher, ill-
prepared for the lesson, is leading a discussion of the book of Jonah.
As the men grope their way through and joke about the story, Jonah is
likened to

. . . the sinner today. There he was on that ship, about ready to
be sunk, and yit he didn't realize he was in any danger. (p. 167)

The lesson in Jonah's flight is found to be obedience, and in his anger

over God's mercy that he
. . . had a kind of selfish disposition about him. Seems that he
wanted ever'thing to go his way. In other words, he wasn't willin'
for the Lord to rule. (p. 169)

When the class has been formally ended, a debate ensues over whether

Jonah was Christian because the Lord called upon him to preach, or a

 

6 Charles Lee Snider, Jonah in the Bible Country in The American
Mercury 30 (October, 1933), pp. 165-171.

74
sinner because he failed to do as he was told. The final argument is
that of Brother Oates who maintains that Jonah was converted to Christi-
anity in the belly of the fish, as evidenced by his prayer for salvation.

BROTHER SAWYER: Well, if he was a Christian when he come out o'
the whale, how come he thought more of his gourd vine than he
did 0' the lives 0' them people?

BROTHER OATES: Why, he jist had that much 0' the Old Adam left in
him. He was a Christian, but he was like all the rest of us:
he weren't perfeck. They don't none of us live as close to
the Lord as we ought to. They ain't no man, I don't care how
good he is, but what's got some 0' the Old Adam left in him.

Although early in the drama the day's Golden Text has been introduced as
"Go ye, therefore . . . and make disciples . . . of all the nations . . .,"
the universalist idea as a lesson in the book of Jonah is not further
developed by Snider or by his Men's Bible Class.

The first ”Jonah" play to exploit fully the didactic possibilities
of the subject is also the earliest extant drama based on the Biblical
book. Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene's A Looking-Glass for London and
England was first performed in London within the last two decades of the

sixteenth century.7 In the drama primary attention is directed to

 

7 Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, A Looking-Glass for London and
England, in Dickinson, ed., Robert Greene, pp. 77-164. Textual cita-
tions will be to the Dickinson edition of the play. For major scholarly
editions of the text see the following sources: Dyce; Alexander B.
Grosart, ed., The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert
Greene, ML A. (London: Huth Library, 1881-1886), vol. 14; J[ohn] Chur-
ton Collins, ed., The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene (Oxford: Clar-
endon, 1905), vol. 1. Dickinson's edition is based on the text of Dyce,
who followed the practice which has become normative of employing almost
exclusively the earliest quarto, of 1594. For the more recent scholarly
editions of the text see Greg, and a review of this edition by Alice
Walker in Review of'English Studies 10 (April, 1934), pp. 223-225;

75

Nineveh and its sins rather than to the prophet Jonas, who indeed does

 

and Tetsumaro Hayashi, ed., A Looking Glasse for London and England by
Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene: An Elizabethan Text (Metuchen, NJ:
Scarecrow, 1970). The major quartos with which that of 1594 is usually
collated are those dated 1598, 1602, and 1617. A seldomrconsulted
quarto, which Charles Reed Baskervill identifies as a company's prompt
book in use at least as early as 1606, is described in his "A Prompt
Copy of.A Looking Glass for London and England," Modern Philology 30
(August, 1932), pp. 29-51. The early printing history of the play will
be found in A[ntony] F. Allison, Robert Greene, 1558-1592: A Biblio-
graphical Catalogue of’the Early Editions in English (to 1640) (Folke-
stone, Kent: William Dawson and Sons, Pall Mall Bibliographies, no. 4,
1975), p. 42. The most important reference tools for Greene research
are the bibliography in the Hayashi volume cited above and his Robert
Greene Criticism: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Matuchen, NJ: Scarecrow,
1971 .

Dickinson discusses various possibilities regarding the dating of the
Lodge and Greene play and concludes that it was composed either prior to
1588 or between 1589 and 1591. Dickinson, Introduction to A Looking-
Glass, pp. xlix—lii. Hayashi believes the play to have been written in
1586. Hayashi, A Looking Glasse, Preface, p. v. Allison and Paradise

a ree upon 1587 as the probable year of composition. Allison, p. 42; ““
Nfathaniel] Burton Paradise, Thomas Lodge: The History of’an Elizabethan
(New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1931; Archon, 1970). pp. 151-142.
Gayley holds 1588 as the latest possible composition date. Charles
Mills Gayley, "Robert Greene: Critical Essay," in Gayley, ed., Repre-
sentative English Comedies, From the Beginnings to Shakespeare (New
York: Macmillan, 1921), pp. 405-406. But on the basis of parallels to
Dr. Faustus and The Famous Historic of’Fryer Bacon, Law concludes that
the Lodge and Greene play must have been written between 1589 and 1591.
Robert Adger Law, "Two Parallels to Greene and Lodge's Looking—Glass"
Modern Language Notes 26:5 (May, 1911), p. 147. See also Law's "A
Looking Glass and the Scriptures," Texas University Studies in English
19 (1939), p. 46.

Though the date of the first performance is not known, Dickinson sug-
gests that it was originally produced by the Queen's players before

1591. The first recorded performance is that by Lord Strange‘s servants
in March of 1592. Dickinson, A Looking-Glass, p. 78. See Philip
Henslowe, Diary, ed. R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert (London: Cambridge
University, 1961), pp. 16-17, 19. The four recorded performances by "my
lorde stranges men" are listed by Henslowe as taking place on March 8

and 27 and April 19 in 1591 and June 7 in 1592. The Diary editors point
out that each of these years must be advanced by one. See Introduction,
p. xxvi; Note on the Indexes and Glossary, p. 337; Index of Year-Dates,

p. 368. Hayashi, however, maintains that all four performances were

given in 1590. Hayashi, Robert Greene Criticism, p. xviii. Gayley
believes the original production, by the Queen's Company, to have been

in 1587 or early 1588. Gayley, pp. 406-407. Acheson assigns to this pro-
duction the year 1590. Arthur Acheson, Shakespeare, Chapman and "Sir Thomas
Moore" (London: 1931; New York: AMS, 1970), pp. 157-158.

~-

1"

.- \14

76
not make an appearance during the first two acts. And although Jonas
takes responsibility for the overt moralizing at the end of the play, his
role up to that point is relatively minor. Furthermore, Jonas himself
serves as the object of one--and one of the least convincing--in a series
of moral lessons delivered directly to the audience by Oseas. The
homiletic vehicle is thus the prophet Oseas, a character which as Ruth H.
Blackburn points out is based not only on Hosea but on other Old Testa-
ment prophetic books and New Testament passages as well.8 E. K. Chambers

proposes that Oseas represents the formal device of a "presenter, situ-
ated during the course of the performance on the balcony or space above
the stage and commenting on the action while ignored by the actors.9 The
function and effect of this device are suggested by T. G. Scalingar,
characterizing the play as ". . . virtually a series of diatribes against

vice by the prophet Oseas, borne out by illustrative episodes on the two

planes of court and tavern."10 Blackburn labels A Looking-Glass a
"11

. sermon in dramatic form.
That A Looking-Glass should be considered in the tradition of the

medieval morality play is a virtual consensus among the critics, desig-

nating the drama variously as: ". . . an Elizabethan Morality play . . .,

". . . a modernised morality," ". . . a kind of late morality play . . .

 

8 Blackburn, pp. 167-169.

9 E[dmund] K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, vol. 3 (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1923), p. 92.

10 T. G. Scalingar, "The Elizabethan Literary Renaissance," in
Boris Ford, ed., The Age of Shakespeare, The Pelican Guide to English
Literature, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Penguin, 1955), p. 58.

11 Blackburn, p. 171.

77
and ". . . a belated morality . . .," a ". . . morality type of play . . .,"
an example of ". . . elaborate morality plays," ". . . a sensational

Biblical Morality, and manifesting ". . . the deliberate didacticism of
the old Moralities."12 This is not to maintain that the drama lacks
either humor or a keen sense of box-office theatricalism, for ". . . here
were two experts who knew just how to plan a two hours' entertainment
which would keep the audience thrilled and happy, to send them away well-
filled and feeling good."13 Identifying the confluence in the play of
waning medieval dramatic traditions, Schelling observes that ". . . we
find in the strange production, A Looking Glass for London and England,
once more an attempted reconciliation of the conflicting elements of
scriptural story, moral abstractions, and interlude of farcical intent."14

This "pure moral interlude, according to Dickinson is a notably English

 

12 Hayashi, A Looking Glasse, p. vi; Dickinson, p. 78; Thomas
B[radley] Stroup, Microcosmos: The Shape of the Elizabethan Play
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1965), pp. 51, 184; Paradise, p.
157; Blackburn, p. 191; Scalingar, p. 57; Arnold Wynne, The Growth of
English Drama (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914), p. 151. G. Wilson Knight says
of.A Looking-Glass: "The vast design draws on the Miracles and Moralities,
Seneca's five-act structure and chorus, Italian Machiavellianism,
Marlovian excess, and Elizabethan conscience." Knight, The Golden
Labyrinth: A Study of’British Drama (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962), p.
65. With respect to the chorus cited by Knight, Sidney R. Homan points
out that Oseas, and later Jonas, are "choral figures." Homan, "'A
Looking-Glass for London and England': The Source for Dekker's 'If It Be
Not a Good Play, the Devil Is in It,'" Notes and Queries 211 (August,
1966), p. 301. Knight's suggestion of Senecan influence in terms of
"five-act structure" is questionable, as the play was written with the
scene as the basic dramatic unit and the earliest printing does not
contain act divisions. Law, "A Looking Glass and the Scriptures,"

p. 34.

13 G. B. Harrison, Elizabethan Plays and Players (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Books, pub. 1956). p. 90.

14 Felix E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama 1558-1642, vol. 1 (Boston
and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1908), p. 41.

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78

development. "The English morality combines with rustic low life to
produce the interlude, which continues its course of didacticism and
horseplay until the end of the century."15

In one particularly important respect this Elizabethan morality
differs from the medieval variety. As Bernard Spivak notes, if the
latter typically urges proper religious and moral conduct upon the
individual Christian, A Looking-Glass should rather be grouped with

. . socio- political moralities, their concern being the safety

and health not of the individual but of the whole state. Their

dramatis personae have civic or national significance and so do

their values.16
The Lodge and Greene play thus can be labelled "politically didactic,"
with the Ninevite King Rasni one of several dramatic ". . . studies of
imperfect kings who learn the lessons of experience and become better."17
Thomas B. Stroup suggests the relationship between individual and social
immorality:

The conflicts wrought by sin within the soul of the individual, the

microcosm, lead to conflicts and corruption among individuals and

those to the conflicts and disruptions of the affairs of nations.18

Stroup considers this vision as especially characteristic of Greene.

 

15 Dickinson, Introduction to A Looking-Glass, pp. xvi, lviii.

16 Bernard Sp1vak Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil: The
History of a Metaphor in Relation to His Major Villains (New York:
Columbia University, 1958), p. 209. See his full discussion of this
point. pp 209- 211.

17 Blackburn, p. 191. It is her view that the social morality is
not without medieval precedent. "Rooted in medieval homily and ex-
pressed in the shepherd's talk in the work of the Wakefield master, the
impulse to criticize and correct society appears . . . in the strictures
. .). on a society rotten from the top to bottom in Looking Glass." (p.
193

18 Stroup. p. 52.

79
All the pageants of Robert Greene demonstrate this . . . at-
tempt to suggest the whole of society by including in the cast of
each representatives of the various orders . . . In A Looking Glass
for London and England . 1 . the two writers feel obliged to pre—
sent the ent1re spectrum.

Dickinson, arguing that moral purpose remains prominent in all of
Greene's writings, points out that the didactic tradition in drama was
still quite strong at the time Greene was attending school.20 Attention
has been called in particular, with reference to A Looking—Glass, to
Greene's pamphlets. Scalingar considers the play to be ". . . in the
same vein as Greene's autobiographical pamphlets of 'repentance' and his
'conycatching' exposures of the London underworld."21 Greene himself
vowed to devote himself to religious and moral subjects in order that he
". . may with the Ninevites shew in sackcloth a hearty repentance."22
As in the play, so in Greene's "Coney-catching series" the intent is
" . to expose the practice of sharpers and knaves who were fleecing
the country people who came to London."23 Greene's sympathy for the
lower classes and his use of lower-class heroes and heroines24 has led

some critics to regard "the lighter prose scenes" such as those involving

 

19 Ibid., pp. 155-156.

20 Dickinson, Introduction to A Looking-Glass, p. x.
21 Scalingar, p. 57.

22 Collins, p. 137. Quoted in Roston, p. 100.

23 William H. Chapman, William Shakspere and Robert Greene: The
Evidence (Ashland, CA: Tribune; New York: Haskell House, 1974), pp. 56-
57. Nicholas Storojenko provides a concise review of Greene's "conny-
catching" pamphlets in his Robert Greene: His Life and Works. A Crit-
ical Investigation, trans. E. A. Brayley Hodgetts, vol. 1 of Grosart,
ed. , The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, M.
A., pp. 129-134. See also Collins, pp. 30-34.

24 Chapman, p. 56.

80

the ruffian Adam as directly from Greene's pen.25

Lodge, too, in his other writings gives evidence of knowledge of and
concern over the sharp practices of unethical Londoners. Evidence sug-
gests that Lodge himself had fallen prey to usurers.26 He also appears
to have been engaged in a number of litigations, including one with his
elder brother William whom he attempted to sue for funds. Sisson wonders
" . whether Lodge had William in mind when he drew the picture of that
'covetous caterpillar,’ the Usurer in A Looking Glass for London and
England, in a scene which we may reasonably take to be the work of the
young lawyer rather than of Greene."27 Of particular relevance to A
Looking-Glass is Lodge's pamphlet An Alarum Against USurers, printed in
1584. Alexander Dyce comments that Scene One in Act Five, in which the
Usurer cries out his repentance, ". . . is little more than a versi-
fication of a passage in the Alarum Against USurers . . ."28 In the

pamphlet Lodge takes usurers to task for tricking young heirs out of

their entire farm holdings--the fate of the young gentleman Thrasybulus

 

25 Frederick S[amuel] Boas, An Introduction to Tudor Drama (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1933), p. 168.

25 Wesley D. Rae, Thomas Lodge, Sylvia E. Bouman, ed., Twayne's
English Authors Series, no. 59 (New York: Twayne, 1967). p. 29. See
also Charles J. Sisson, "Thomas Lodge and His Family," in Sisson, ed.,
Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University,
1933), pp. 152-156.

27 Sisson, pp. 88-89. Though Lodge was himself a lawyer, Sisson
suggests that he was not seriously engaged in the profession, pp. 5, 82.

28 Dyce, p. 141. See also Law, "Two Parallels to Greene and
Lodge's Looking-Glass," pp. 77-80. Boas cites two scenes drawn from
Lodge's polemical pamphlet, as well as pointing out that the scenes
involving the sailors were doubtless based upon Lodge's own sea voyages.
Boas, p. 167.

81

in the play.29 Lodge further accuses the usurers of ". . . making their
debter to discharge in their bookes of account the receit of so much
money, where indeede they had nothing but dead commoditie." This circum-
stance corresponds to that encountered by Thrasybulus, who receives part
of a loan in goods while signing a receipt indicating that the transac-
tion has been entirely in cash. The example Lodge cites in the Alarum is
of the receipt of lute strings, the commodity which Thrasybulus in the
drama complains did not prove to equal the value claimed by the Usurer.30

The Scriptural source for the Jonah material has been identified as
the Bishop's Bible, a recent translation currently in use officially in
the Church of England.31 In addition, the name Rasni apparently was
taken from Josephus' history of the Jews, a work subsequently translated
by Lodge.32 Some critical opinion suggests that the actual character of

King Rasni is based on Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine.33 Thematically,

 

29 Thomas Lodge, An Alarum Against Usurers, in A Defence of Poetry,
Music, and Stage-Plays, by Thomas Lodge, of Lincoln's Inn. To Which Are
Added, by the Same Author, An Alarum Against Usurers; and The Delectable
History of'Forbonius and Prisceria (London: The Shakespeare Society,
1853), p. 44.

30 Ibid., p. 65. See Sisson, pp. 151-152.

31 Law, "A Looking Glasse and the Scriptures," pp. 34-41. Margaret
Mary Cotham has closely examined the dramatic text to locate all Bib-
lical quotations, paraphrases, and allusions. Cotham, "Greene and
Lodge's A Looking-Glass for London and England" (M.A. thesis, University
of Texas, 1928), pp. 7-84, 98-104.

32 Paradise, p. 154.

33 Boas, p. 168; C[harles] F[rederick] Tucker Brooke, The Tudor
Drama: A History of English National Drama to the Retirement of Shake-
speare (Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Houghton Mifflin,
1908), p. 247. Lily 8. Campbell finds this Marlovian source possible
but dubious. Campbell, pp. 247, 250.

82

the didactic interests of Lodge and Greene may have been drawn generally
from contemporary preaching and pamphlets.34 Naomi E. Pasachoff dis-
cusses several sermons exploring the relationship between individual sin
as embodied in Jonah and the larger social dislocation, and cites writ-
ings on the nature of the commonwealth which relate ideologically to both
the personal and the corporate sinful states. To a considerable degree
the content of A Looking-Glass, according to Pasachoff, could have been
inspired by John Ponet, Protestant bishop exiled during the reign of
Queen Mary and author of the Shorte treatise of'politike power of 1556.35

Opinions vary widely as to the dramatic and theatrical viability of
the play. Gayley, for example, holds that ". . . the Looking-Glasse is
well constructed."36 Wynne, on the other hand, argues: "Devoid of any
proper plot, the play merely brings together various incidents to exhibit
such social evils as usury, legal corruption, filial ingratitude, fric-
tion between master and servant."37 While some critics feel the play-
wrights' castigation of corruption at the level of the head of state to
be their most important or interesting moral theme, others would agree
with Kenneth Muir's assessment: "The episodes of the subplots concerning
usury . . . corruption, drunkenness, and adultery are a more relevant

mirror of London vice than Rasni's flamboyant sins; and these scenes,

 

34 Roston, pp. 96-97.
35 Pasachoff, pp. 65-74, 82-91.

35 Gayley, p. 407. A similar assertion is made by Law, "A Looking
Glasse and the Scriptures," pp. 33-34.

37 Wynne, p. 151.

83

mostly in prose, are written with much greater vigor and some humour."38
It should be noted at least that many of Oseas' denunciations of contem-
porary vices are rooted in the Old Testament prophetic tradition with its
emphasis on both social justice and mercy. The diatribe at the end of

Act One, Scene Three, may serve as example.

Where hateful usury
Is counted husbandry;
Where merciless men rob the poor,
And the needy are thrust out of door;
Where gain is held for conscience,
And men's pleasure is all on pence;
Where young gentlemen forfeit their lands,
Through riot, into the usurer's hands;
Where poverty is despis'd, and pity banish'd,
And mercy indeed utterly vanish'd:
Where men esteem more of money than of God;
Let that land look to feel his wrathful rod:
For there is no sin more odious in his sight
Than where usury defrauds the poor of his right.
London, take heed, these sins abound in thee;
The poor complain, the widows wronged be;
The gentlemen by subtlety are spoil'd;
The ploughmen lose the crop for which they toil'd:
Sin reigns in thee, 0 London, every hour:
Repent, and tempt not thus the heavenly power. (p. 95)

The several plots are tied together thematically as the ills of the city
specified by Oseas are revealed at all levels of the social, political,
and economic order. Parallels between the levels are made evident, as
when king's councillor Radigan rejects his parents in Act Three, Scene
Two, followed by the Smith's apprentice Adam beating his master in Scene
Three.39 The dramatic action of the play as a whole may be summarized in
terms of Lily B. Campbell's scheme. The audience is first introduced to

three sets of characters enmeshed in vice. Then Jonah's individual sin

 

38 Kenneth Muir, "Robert Greene as Dramatist," in Richard Hosley,
ed., Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of'Hardin
Craig (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1962), p. 47.

39 This parallelism is noted by Blackburn, p. 166.

84
and repentance are portrayed. And finally the three sets of characters
are seen in their respective acts of repentance.40

A rehearsal of the plot will most usefully reveal both the sins
inveighed against and the relationships among the several groups of
characters. In Act One, Scene One, Rasni enters, having been victorious
against both King Jeroboam of Jerusalem and "Great Jewry's God," in the
company of his vassal kings. Rasni boasts of the splendors of his city
and of his own person, and his subjects call him "god on earth." (pp. 82-
83) Despite warnings against incest, Rasni decides to marry his sister
Remilia, who has likened her brother to the Roman deities. At the same
time he conceives a notion to seduce Alvida, wife to the King of Paphla-
gonia. In Scene Two the prophet Oseas is brought in by the Angel to
observe what is going on in Nineveh so that he may report the wickedness
to the Jerusalemites. Adam and his fellow ruffians enter, clowning and
seeking the ale-house, and Oseas delivers his first warning to London.
In Scene Three the Usurer is seen bilking both gentry and peasants, and
Oseas relates these practices to contemporary England.

The opening of Act Two, Scene One, serves to reveal the vanity of
Remilia, who is struck dead before the marriage to Rasni can be consum-
mated.41 Rasni thereupon goes off with Alvida, and Oseas provides his
commentary. In Scene Two the Usurer bribes the judge and the lawyer
hired by both Thrasybulus and the peasant farmer Alcon. Their cases

against the Usurer are preremptorily dismissed. Oseas comments. In

 

40 Campbell, p. 249.

41 Wynne points out the use of the "inner below," presumably at the
rear of the stage, when Rasni "draws the curtains" to discover his sis-
ter's dead body. Wynne, p. 275.

85
Scene Three Adam and his cronies enter drunk, and the Second Ruffian
kills the First Ruffian in a fight over a girl. In a parallel situation,
Alvida poisons her husband in order to make herself available to Rasni.
Oseas makes the point:

Where whoredom reigns, there murder follows fast,
As falling leaves before the winter blast. (p. 114)

The first scene of Act Three opens at a Judean seaport with Jonas
complaining about the waywardness of Israel. The Angel presents God's
call to Jonas. The prophet objects that this commission will result in
his own people giving in to even greater sins, and will ". . . publish to
the world my country's blame." (p. 117) Jonas then goes off with the
merchants and sailors, and Oseas suggests that from Jonah's example one
may learn how not to behave as a prophet. In Scene Two Radigan refuses
to aid his impoverished family or their friend Thrasybulus. Rasni sup-
ports his underling's attitude. Radigan's mother Samia delivers a curse
and Radigan is swallowed in flames. Rasni is advised against concern for
the incident as a portent, and Oseas tells of the coming of Christ to
right the many wrongs done by the powerful at the expense of the weak and
poor. In Scene Three Adam and his master's wife are caught in adultery.
Adam beats the Smith, and Oseas chastises servants who rebel against
their masters.

In Scene One of Act Four the merchants and seamen tell the Governor
of Joppa of their misadventures at sea, though with no mention of the
swallowing of Jonas by a fish. Oseas praises the ready conversion of
these pagans, warning London and other "western cities," those ". . . whom
long persuasions cannot win," to begin to heed their preachers (pp. 131-

132). Scene Two finds Jonas on the shore near Nineveh. Jonas makes

to
rape
Ange

the J

reliit
With I
edict
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world a

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42
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0f the V'

86
reference to his prayer from the fish's belly, incorporating in his

present speech to God the imagery of the psalm in the book of Jonah. The
Angel delivers the second call, which Jonas accepts, and Oseas calls
attention to his proper prophetic obedience and zeal. In Scene Three
Alvida attempts unsuccessfully to seduce the King of Cilicia. Rasni
hears reports of "ghosts" crying woe upon his city. A hand bearing a
burning sword appears from a cloud, but Rasni again fails to heed the
omen. Oseas comments. In Scene Four Adam encounters a man in devil's
garb, and, refusing to be deceived, beats him.42 The peasants Alcon and
Samia, their younger son Clesiphon, and Thrasybulus, all having been
reduced to thievery, sell their stolen goods to the Usurer. Jonas enters
crying repentance and coming destruction, and the five characters on
stage immediately confess their guilt. The boy Clesiphon strikes the one
positive note, pointing out that their desperate situation can be employed
to lead them to true repentance. Oseas delivers his final call to
repentance, first to Nineveh and then to London, and is then taken by the
Angel back to Jerusalem where he is to preach on the lessons provided by
the Ninevites.

Act Five begins with Rasni and his court carousing. Adam enters to
relate how he beat the devil, and joins in the merriment. Jonas appears
with his words of warning, whereupon Rasni is convinced and issues his
edict that sackcloth and ashes and fasting shall be the order of the day
in his kingdom. In Scene Three Jonas issues his warning to the western
world at large, and then seats himself to watch the end of Nineveh.

Within one speech by the prophet the plant grows, Jonas becomes angry at

 

42 Dickinson calls attention to the tradition represented in this
scene. "A famous comic trick in the early plays. Adam is a late figure
of the Vice type." A Looking-Glass, p. 141, n. 1.

87
God's staying his hand and explains this to have been the reason for his
reluctance to carry out his task to begin with, and the plant dies. The
Angel carries on the exchange with Jonas to establish the lesson of the
plant, and adds that Jonas should observe the true contrition of these
Ninevites. The Angel commands Jonas now to proclaim God's mercy. Jonas,
in full agreement, leaves to carry out this new assignment. In Scene
Four the King's Searchers find food and drink hidden on Adam, and take
the man away to be hanged. In Scene Five Jonas brings his message of
peace and forgiveness to the court. Rasni announces his intention to
marry Alvida. The Usurer and Thrasybulus restore their respectively ill-
gotten gains. Rasni proclaims a new period of fasting and declares: "Let
Israel's God be honour'd in our land." (p. 163) Finally Jonas, in a
curtain speech, points out that England is more favored by nature than
was Assyria and yet London is more filled with sin than was Nineveh. And
he implies that only the virtues of England's queen have thus far stayed
the much-deserved wrathful judgment.

The remaining seven "Jonah" plays to be considered in the present
section all appeared during the decade from 1967 to 1977. The first,
Colin Hodgetts' musical Jo Jonah, is subtitled "A folk dramalogue in four
movements."43 "The theme of the play," according to the author,

is Man's responsibility towards the poor and hungry of the world.

It is a call for unselfish action on a national scale and for a

more imaginative and understanding approach to under-developed

nations.

Though this theme is carried through the four "movements" of the play,

 

43 Colin Hodgetts, Jo Jonah: A Folk Dramalogue in Four Movements
(Oxford: Religious Education, 1967). The play was first performed at
the St. John-at-Hackney church. Hodgetts, Introduction, p. viii.

44 Hodgetts, Introduction, p. vii.

the Ni

45

46H.

88
as world need is contrasted with the comfortable bourgeois life of the
industrialized nations, each movement with its own headnote and intro-
ductory song constitutes an independent episode only loosely connected to
the others. Dialogue segments are short, leading into or interspersed
with the stanzas of the musical numbers. The songs are largely in a folk
idiom which seems ill-fitted to the satirical thrusts at and commentary
upon contemporary urban attitudes and mores. This is particularly true
of those songs borrowed rather than composed by the author. Sentimen-
tality at times becomes the prevailing mood of the piece, as when in
Movement One alternating lines of dialogue and sung verses tell of the
death of George and his family, representing the third world.

Though setting, properties, and costumes are minimal in order to
facilitate production in a sanctuary or hall without a stage, Hodgetts
has endeavored to maintain a high degree of theatricality through use of
slide projections, folk songs, dance, mime, and taped sound. The play-
wright recommends that, except for certain specified "live" speeches, all
dialogue be on tape so that ". . . all the words will be heard, no matter
how bad the acoustics of the building are, and . . . the actors can
concentrate on acting because they don't have to strain to remember
words." The effect of all of these devices he considers less that of a
"play" than that of "total theatre."45 He calls also for masks to be
worn by all actors except the Preacher.46 The play employs a Narrator
and a large cast to represent the world's poor, the ship's passengers,

the Ninevites/Asians.

 

45 Ibid.
45 Hodgetts, end notes, p. 47.

89

Movement One is designated: "Jonah is troubled by his conscience but
decides to ignore it." It opens with the "Old Fish Song."

When he heard the Lord speaking old Jonah said, "No,

I'm a true hard-shell Baptist and so I won't go.

The Nineveh people are nothing to me

I couldn't care less if they die or go free."
Then Jo Jonah is introduced by the Narrator as

. an ordinary man, a very ordinary man. He lives, just as

pther)ordinary men live, in a similar house in a similar street.

p. 1
As Jo Jonah is working in his office in London, two Lawyers enter and Jo
Jonah discovers that he is both judge and accused at his own trial. He
becomes convinced that he should share what he has with people in under-
developed countries and offers fifty pounds to alleviate poverty and
suffering. When informed that his offer is only tokenism, Jo Jonah
decides to leave town for a vacation.

Movement Two treats the theme:

Jonah tries to escape from his conscience but the usual escape

routes are abhorent to him. He rejects them and in turn is re-

jected. (p. 15)
The ship is an ocean liner embarked on a pleasure cruise. The depiction
of sins which the "Jonah" playwrights for the most part reserve for a
Nineveh scene Hodgetts transfers to the sea voyage. Jo Jonah is tempted
by contemporary modes of escape from responsibility: gambling, casual

sex, alcohol, drugs. But

. . Jonah remains unsatisfied, seeking. He finds their pleasures
repulsive. (p. 21)

The storm comes, the passengers pray, and Jonah ends up in the sea.
Movement Three is titled:

Jonah comes to grips with his standards. The whale helps him to
rebuild himself. (p. 24)

Hodgetts in this act introduces one of the several talking whales of

90
"Jonah" drama. The whale in this instance functions as the author's
mouthpiece, leading Jo Jonah through what Hodgetts refers to as "the
catechism." (p. 24) The rehearsal of Jo Jonah's personal history leads
to a recital of the ten comandments, now perverted to express contem—
porary social values. As each comnandment is stated, a dancer moves
forward with a large white whale rib. Thus is formed the belly of the
whale, which Jo Jonah eventually identifies as the ". . . prison of my
pas t." (p. 27) "The preacher turns the pulpit light on," and helps Jo
Jonah, perceive that when faced with the conflict between cultural demands
and what one knows is just and honorable "It's easier to get rid of your
pr'i nciples." (p. 26) As Jo Jonah rejects the false values the dancers
and ribs depart. Jonah's prayer for deliverance is rendered as a sung
version of Psalm 129. The protagonist is finally freed from the whale
and deposited on dry land. The whale explains:

I am not a prison, Jonah, your past is the prison. I am a womR7
You are here to be reformed so that you may be reborn. (p. 28)

The Narrator helps Jo Jonah establish the right values and. goals, and the
Protagonist is now ". . . free for the future" and ". . . can face the
Challenge he had to turn away from at the beginning of our story."

(pp- 31-32)

"Jonah takes action which leads him to love" is the headnote for
Movement Four. The final portion of Hodgetts' "Old Fish Song," intro-
du(:‘ing this movement, makes reference to Nineveh. It is soon apparent to
the audience that the scene is actually modern London. The materialistic
Standards of Jo Jonah's society are emphasized through the particularly

\

. 47 On the mythic tradition in which the belly of the fish sym-
bolizes a womb, see pp. 66-67, 11. 8.

91

non-dramatic device of a lengthy recital of statistics by the prophet.
HalfWay through the act, however, the "Ninevite" crowds are revealed to
be impoverished Asians. Whereas initially Jo Jonah in fleeing from God's
command had been attempting to escape responsibility for existing mission
needs, in this act he takes up that responsibility but in the form of
imperialism through charity. As he withholds aid in order to coerce the
recipients to adopt his political and cultural standards, a child dies at
his feet. He is then in a position to receive his final lesson, deli-
vered by Asian 2.

We need food. We don't need conditions. Development is not some-

thing you do for us, even if you devote your life to doing it. It

means a working relationship between rich and poor, between those

who give aid and the people who receive it. We are human beings.

We need love. You cannot love on condition. Love is a response to

a situation. (p. 43)

In the preface to his three one-act Old Testament plays, collected
under the title From Nineveh to Now, Gordon C. Bennett states:

From the first time someone said to me, "that play was worth a
dozen sermons," I've been intrigued by the power in drama to share
the gospel. Since then I've invested a good deal of time in
message plays. . .

In an essay in Christianity Today the author specifies the type of "mes-
sage" he is interested in communicating. "I've spent a chunk of my life
exploring the church-theater dimension, and I've worked out ways of using
drama to convey a message about God and man, love, sacrifice, justice,
redemption, and resurrection." Bennett here also specifies that the

intended result of his dramatic messages is that ". . . of provoking

self-reflection and self-improvement."49

 

48 Gordon C. Bennett, From Nineveh to Now: Three Dramatic Fantasies
Based on the Old Testament (St. Louis: Bethany, 1970, 1971, 1973),
Preface, p. 9.

49 Gordon C. Bennett, "The Refiner's Fire: Church and Theater,"
Christianity Today 18:16 (May 10, 1974). p. 20.

92

In his introduction to So Why Does that Weirdo Prophet Keep Watching
the water? Bennett refers with admiration to Wolf Mankowitz's "Jonah"
dramatization It Should Happen to a Dog.50 Bennett's use of such devices
as a Nineveh newspaper and costuming which is suggestively both Biblical
and modern, along with the designation of Jonah as an insurance salesman,
suggests borrowings from Mankowitz's comedy which Bennett admits ". . . promp-
ted me to stage another version . . ."51 Bennett employs puns and
attempts to keep much of his dialogue humorous; however, his play lacks
the genuine wit of Mankowitz and is not primarily a comic dramatization.

With the exception of Scenes Six and Eight, the ten scenes are quite
brief. Staging is simple, to ensure an uninterrupted flow of action,
facilitated through lighting area changes. The play begins after Jonah's
prophecy has been delivered to the Ninevites. The earlier part of the
story is subsequently presented in flashback, the necessity for which is
not entirely clear. Like Hodgetts, Bennett is concerned with social,
political, and economic reform as the necessary expresssion of a more
personal "repentance." But Bennett's focus is less narrowed than is
Hodgetts' to a specific situation such as the wealthy nations' rela-
tionship to the "third world."

In Scene One two Ninevites are rejoicing over the saving of their

city and over Jonah as their savior. They cannot understand why the

 

50 Gordon C. Bennett, So Why Does that Weirdo Prophet Keep Watching
the Water?, in From Nineveh to Now, pp. 11-38. The play was originally
produced at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, in April 1969.
Bennett, weirdo Prophet, Preface, p. 10.

51 Bennett, weirdo Prophet, Introduction, p. 13. Mankowitz's It
Should Happen to a Dog is discussed in chapter five.

93

prophet sits and pouts. In Scene Two Jonah is reading the newspaper
weather reports, hoping that God perhaps still intends to punish the
city. In Scene Three the two Ninevites try unsuccessfully to entice
Jonah to enjoy their seaside amusements. In Scene Four Jonah informs the
audience that he is watching for his whale. He briefly recounts his call
by God and his flight, employing an anachronism reminiscent of but rather
heavier than those of Mankowitz:

If you remember the story of Jonah, you know it's a classic
case of disobedience. The preachers all use me to illustrate the
point. (p. 19)

Jonah's narrative leads into the flashback, which begins with Scene Five.
On the ship, where the crew has been battling the raging storm, Jonah
convinces the Captain that he must be thrown overboard.

Scene Six takes place in the belly of the whale, identified vaguely
as possibly hell or ". . . maybe . . . purgatory." (p. 27) Jonah here
encounters Adam Smith and Eve Jones who have been playing an eternal game
of cards with an unidentified and non-speaking Dealer. Adam reveals that
he wasan early atomic scientist, motivated by monetary reward and
refusing to take seriously ethical implications of his work; Eve that she
was similarly motivated by wealth and fame. Their pursuit of such goals
represents the contemporary eating of the apple of knowledge of good and
evil. They remain in the whale and at the unending game of cards because
they ". . . like having it both ways . . ." (p. 25) The point is clari-
fied at the end of the scene, when the "purgatory" is identified as
contemporary life.

ADAM: Ambivalence is my middle name. There's always the big

battle going on inside, and I've come to the point of not

caring who wins. This is the house of indifference. We like

to eat our cake and have it too, and no longer do we reach for
the Alka-Seltzer.

94
JONAH: So this is the gray ghetto, where light is never too
bright. Dullsville incorporated. Population three--or three
-million.

EVE: (brightly) It's not so bad, really. You have to adjust.
(pp. 27-28)

In Scene Seven Jonah is addressed sarcastically by the Voice:
"Jonah! 0 Minor Prophet Jonah!" (p. 28) The Voice persuades Jonah that
he must hereafter be obedient. In Scene Eight Jonah brings his warnings
to the King, who invites the prophet to witness the "festival of obei-
sance" to the several gods of Nineveh. Bennett's stage directions read:

The whole sequence will suggest a ritualized burlesque on man, his

idols, and his times. KING and SERVANTS may take up props (e.g.,

wine bottle, jewelry box, and rifle) that relate symbolically.

(p. 31)

The deities celebrated are Bacchus, the apotheosis of drink and sex;
Hermes, of business enterprise and commercial Machiavellianism; and Mars,
of war and military predominance. Jonah nevertheless convinces the King
that he and his subjects must ". . . make a turning." (p. 34) In Ben-
nett's version of "Jonah," it is the King who now voices the universalist
implications of the Biblical source:

We shall repent of our evil ways and beg your God for mercy. And

we shall thank him for extending his salvation to the pagans of

Nineveh. We shall have to revise our opinion of your God, Mr.

Jonah. We all thought him rather snobbish, you know, chosen people

and all that. "How odd of God to choose Jews." But now he smiles

on us too.
Jonah, however, is angry at this repentance "in nothing flat," largely
because ". . . I don't even get a chance to preach my complete sermon
entitled 'The Demise of Nineveh,‘ or 'Watch Out Lest You Drown in Your

Own Bathtub, Babylon!‘ (p. 35)

Though without explicit indication of the fact, Scene Nine appears

95
to begin at the point in the story where the flashback had commenced.52
A Messenger endeavors to convince Jonah that he should not spend his days
being gloomy, but rather rejoice and celebrate life. The lesson of the
withering plant is undergone, and Jonah learns that his preaching mission
is to continue. In Scene Ten Jonah explains that he is watching for the
whale in order to bring the message of salvation-~now identified as
available through "God's Son"--to Adam, Eve, and the Dealer.

In his preface to Six Prophets for Today W. A. Poovy explains that
his purpose in dramatizing each of six "minor" prophets ". . . is to let
a congregation see the prophet as he speaks to the twentieth century."

He further suggests specific ways in which the one-act, single-scene
dramas may be used:

Each play can serve as an introduction to a study of an individual

book. Because of the material covered, the plays can be used as

discussion starters. Or each play can stand alone and be used to

convey a message which is always greater than any single book of
the Bible.

53 Else-

He employs the term "message" repeatedly in discussing his work.
where Poovey argues that drama ". . . can be used to substitute for or to
augment the sermon." The effectiveness of such a procedure, however,
requires more than simply the presentation of the play.

Of course there should be a followup . . . Discussion can follow
during a coffee hour after the service. A midweek meeting can

 

52 Some ambiguity remains in this regard. On the basis of Scene
Two, in which Jonah still hopes that the destruction will come, Scene
Nine must take up the story past the point of the flashback interrup-
tion. But on the basis of Scene Four, in which Jonah announces that he
is looking for the whale, Scene Ten represents the "present" story's
continuation.

53 Poovey, p. 8.

96

afford opportunity for discussing the implications of the drama.
Even g4sermon on the same subject the next Sunday can prove valu-
able.

In his Jonah--The WOrld's Greatest Miracle Poovey calls for a bare
stage, with Jonah and the Heckler in modern dress and the other char-
acters in either modern dress or Biblical costumes.55 A Chairman
". . . seated somewhat removed from the action" introduces the two "speakers,"
Jonah and the Heckler, who appear at reading stands. I'JONAH and HECKLER
can read their parts from the stands but it would be better if other
parts were memorized." (p. 9) The effect is that of a lecture begun by
Jonah and interrupted by both the Heckler and brief bits of staged
action. Although Poovey comments, "Jonah can tell us a lot about race
relations . . .," such a theme is not developed in the play.56 In a
speech by the Heckler near the conclusion of the play the universalist or
supraracial note is perhaps hinted at, but the reference is equally to
the notion that the Ninevites should be pitied in their innocence.57

Don't you realize that God also made those people who lived in

Nineveh? Did you ever stop to think there were children in that

city, children who had never done you any harm? And probably

people who never took part in the cruelty that made you so bitter?

(p. 23)

At the outset of the play Jonah and the Heckler establish the points

of opposition, Jonah claiming to be . . part of the greatest miracle

 

54 W. A. Poovey, "Preaching and Drama," Lutheran Quarterly 20:4
(November, 1968), pp. 376—377.

55 W. A. Poovey, Jonah-—The World's Greatest Miracle, in Six
Prophets for Today, pp. 9-23.

56 Poovey, Six Prophets for Today, Preface, p. 7.

57 "And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there
are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know
their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" Jonah 4:11,
Revised Standard Version.

97

recorded in the Bible . . ." and the Heckler insisting that Jonah's story
is a series of fabrications (p. 11). Jonah relates the background of his
call, and then introduces Thedus, the ship's captain. Thedus begins to
narrate the incident at sea. The entrance of his wife Cora enables him
to conclude his story in dialogue fashion, though Cora's contributions to
the conversation are on the order of : "I'm so sorry. But at least
you're safe." (p. 15) Thedus makes no reference to Jonah's being swal—
lowed by the fish, commenting only that ". . . somehow I have the feeling
he didn't drown . . ." He informs Cora that they will henceforth worship
the God of Israel, and forbids her to install in their home an idol
representing this deity who does not ". . . allow men to make images of
him.” (p. 16)

Jonah resumes his narrative, pointing out that both fear for himself
and hate of the Ninevites who might actually repent and thus be saved
were the cause of his disobedience.

I was either a dead man or a traitor to Israel. And_that wasn't
much of a choice. (p. 12)

Later, after the city is spared, Jonah adds that he was convinced from
the beginning that

. . . you can't depend on God to do the right thing. Just when you
want him to be stern to other people, he turns soft . . ." (p. 21)

Jonah introduces two Ninevite women who enter to chat about their city,
the prophet, and the king's apparent alarm at Jonah's pronouncements.
After the city has been spared, Dova returns to thank Jonah. Upon the
prophet's informing her that he now hates her people more than ever, the
woman replies: "God have mercy on you, Jonah." The Heckler makes a

rather cryptic reference in passing to Jonah's attitude toward the plant,

98

an incident which has been neither spoken of nor portrayed. In Jonah's
concluding speech the "suspense" created by Jonah's having consistently
refused to define the "greatest miracle" of which he is a part is re-
lieved. Poovey has directed the audience's attention away from the fish,
the sudden cessation of the storm, the withered vine, and the mass
conversion of a pagan city as serious "miracles," and now reveals the
real miracle to be the love of God. "That's the greatest miracle in the
Bible," declares Jonah, "that God loves me and all the other sinners in
the world." (p. 23)58

John J. Debrecini's musical Jonah of’Joppa follows the method of the
story-telling treatments in presenting sequentially the events of the
Biblical account.59 Certain episodes have been expanded slightly to
allow the introduction of extra-Biblical characters and humorous dia—
logue. While the comic quality pervades the opening portion of the play,
however, during and subsequent to the ship scene the tone becomes mark-
edly more serious. The two major exceptions are the introduction of the
citizens of Nineveh and the closing dialogue between Jonah and the Angel.

And the original songs retain, for the most part, a sprightly, Broadway-

 

58 That the general theme had been for some time on the author's
mind is indicated in his earlier essay in the Lutheran Quarterly.
Jesus cried out from the cross: "Father forgive them . . ." Does
modern man face the same challenge, the necessity of forgiveness?
Does man find it hard to echo the words of Jesus? How can man be
moved to forgive? Drama can show this problem very well.

Poovey, "Preaching and Drama," p. 378.

59 John J. Debreci ni, Jonah of Joppa: An Original Musical Play
(1977, typescript). Book and music are by Debrecini. The young people
of the Wyckoff Reformed Church (Wyckoff, New Jersey), who performed the
play in 1977, are credited with composition of the lyrics. Also avail—
able to the present writer was a cassette recording of the original
production, reflecting some slight variations in the text.

99
musical style. The setting consists simply of a ladder. on which the
Angel is perched at the beginning of the play, "a few props," and two
signs reading respectively "Nineveh" and "Tarshish." Costuming is not
specified, though the Angel is to wear a hard hat with wings "similar to
Mercury." The Angel "also eats celery throughout."60 A Narrator is
employed to recite incidents which the author has elected not to depict
on stage. The chorus, in addition to singing, represents the crowds in
Scenes One and Four and the seamen in Scene Two.

Scene One takes place in the marketplace of Joppa. Taking a pos-
sible cue from Wolf Mankowitz, Debrecini introduces Jonah as a travelling
salesman.61 His hats, a recent invention of his own, have never been
seen before by the people of Joppa. Jonah delivers a successful pitch
and his hats become a much-desired item. The show's first song iden-
tifies Jonah as:

. . not a pious man, never went to the temple to pray;

He' d rather spend his time with girls and wine

And let the rabbis pray.

The Angel comes to Jonah with God's call, in a dialogue again somewhat
reminiscent of that by Mankowitz in his corresponding scene. Scene Two
takes place on the ship, and the incidents at sea are handled with
dispatch and economy. A brief Scene Three depicts Jonah in the belly of
the whale, a situation presented primarily through description by the
Narrator. After the chorus has sung "Repent, Repent You Sinner" the

Narrator explains:

 

50 Undated note to the writer from the playwright.

61 On this and other possible Mankowitz influences identified
below, see the discussion of It Should Happen to a Dog in chapter five.

100
Realizing that he could not flee from God and what God wanted him
to do . . . Jonah got on his knees and prayed for forgiveness. He

promised God that if he was given another chance . . . the chance
to stay alive . . . he would go to Nineveh and do God's will.

(9. 12)

Jonah's song "Anybody Care?" then simply repeats these two motifs of a
plea for deliverance and the promise of obedience.

Scene Four takes place in Nineveh. The Ninevites' song "We Love to
Eat" extols the pleasures of gluttony, drunkenness, and avarice. Jonah
enters singing "A New Life You Must Find," an amplified version of
"Repent, Repent You Sinner." Immediately upon delivering his message
Jonah retires to the mountainside to await Nineveh's destruction. When
the King enters to investigate the source of his city's sudden disquiet,
therefore, it is left to the Angel to apprise him of the state of affairs
in his kingdom. In a sudden shift of mood—-but perhaps with no more
abrupt a transition than occurs in the Biblical book of Jonah with the
King's declaration of repentance-~the Ninevites sing "Lord, Forgive Your
Children Made." The Narrator then continues the story through the
sparing of the city. Jonah refuses to accept this outcome of the Nine-
vite repentance and resolves still to wait for the judgment as predicted.
Jonah and the Narrator in dialogue rehearse the episode of the vine, and
the Angel draws from it the customary lesson.

ANGEL: How can you get so excited about a simple plant? You
didn't plant it or water it, did you?

JONAH: No.
ANGEL: Well, why then do you care if it is destroyed?
JONAH: Because I love plants.

ANGEL: You mean . . . like God loves people? Even the people of
Nineveh? (p. 20)

In their duet "Forgive Today" Jonah stubbornly refuses to accept the

Angel's arguments. Following the song, however, Jonah admits: "You know,

101
you're right . . . after all, these people never did me any harm . . . so
why should I be mad if God forgives them?" The final exchange between
Jonah and Angel may again be inspired by the Mankowitz dramatization.

JONAH: . . . I'm tired of sitting here . . . I want to get back to
being a salesman. .

ANGEL: In that case, guess what I fished out of the lake for you?
(Angel hands Jonah his suitcase with some hats)

JONAH: That's great . . . (opens suitcase and takes out hat)
They're a little soggy.

ANGEL: Too bad they weren't waterproof . . . you know . . . like
‘ raincoats?

JONAH: Like what?

ANGEL: Like raincoats . . . oops!

JONAH: That's a great idea . . . raincoats and rainhats . . . that

will surely be ahead of its time. An original . . . right
from THE CREATOR (saying it looking up). (p. 23)

The finale is a reprise of the chorus of "Once There Was a Man," the
song which introduced Jonah in Scene One, with new verses recapitulating
the entire course of events. Though the audience is presumably to view
the moral as drawn from both the Ninevites and Jonah, Jonah's case has
been much more detailed. The concluding lines of "Once There Was a Man"
summarize the drama's point, similar to that expressed by Poovy in his
Jonah--The World '3 Greatest Miracle:

God wants the world to know

His name is love

Forgiveness is the way. (p. 24)

Jim Rose's The Fish Who Went Manning again follows the series of

Biblical incidents in the manner of the story-telling treatments of the

102
book of Jonah.62 Like Debrecini, Rose employs humor and even farce. But
the story-telling and the comedy are intended to serve the purpose of
delivering a message. The emphasis, like that of Hodgetts, is on the
Christian's responsibility in the area of missions. The presentation is
largely narrative, the main character essentially delivering an occa-
sionally interrupted monologue.

The ostensible setting for Rose's dramatization is a church missions
conference. The consensus of the group appears to be that demands at
home are such that time and resources should not be spent on foreigners,
who are unlikely to appreciate the help or listen to the gospel in any
case. Agreement has been reached that the conference itself is a waste
of time and extremely boring, when an ill-clad, wet figure appears. The
intruder announces that he has something important to impart which is of
relevance to the conference.

Oh, did you develop a world strategy for missions?

No, I destroyed one . . .

After the stranger has thus introduced himself he lapses into
Yiddish dialect. He tells of God's command that he preach repentance to
the Ninevites. As his conversation with the Almightly continued his
excitement mounted. "I'm ready! I'm ready!" Then when he learned of
the destination to which he was to carry the nessage, he was taken aback:
"I'm not so ready anymore." He wondered if perhaps the "voice" was not

that of the Lord after all, but the result of his own indigestion. He

 

62 Jim Rose, The Fish Who went Manning (1977, cassette tape). The
drama was presented in the spring of 1977 by a youth group as part of
the worship service at the North West Bible Church in Dallas, Texas.
The author played the leading role in the performance. For information
regarding the production the present writer is indebted to Raymond
Western, a member of the original cast.

103
complained that the Ninevites were "terrible people," and that in any
case God could not be interested in Assyrians when he was the particular
God of the Jews. Then it occurred to the man that, if he ran away,
this God of a certain people within a certain geographical boundary could
not follow him. He booked an economy passage on'a ship bound for Tarshish.
During the description of the storm at sea one of the conferees iden-
tifies the stranger as Jonah. Jonah describes as his first real shock
that not only did the pagan sailors begin praying to his God, ". . . but
worse yet he started hearing them." Finally the lots were cast, Jonah
was identified as the troublemaker, and he was thrown overboard.

In the belly of the fish Jonah in desperation "prayed all the
psalter" and any other prayers he could think of. The fish became sick,
and vomited Jonah forth. Once again in the water, Jonah discovered that
he could stand up, and perceived that he was near the shore not far from
Nineveh. Again God issued the command. Jonah preached, and the citizens
of Nineveh repented. Jonah thereupon retired to a hillside, hoping that
God might change his mind once more and wreak vengeance upon the Nine-
vites. Jonah tells his present-day audience that his anger was aroused
because the Assyrians were every bit as nasty and undeserving as the
Angolans or Cubans. At his campsite Jonah built a shed which, since he
was a prophet and not a carpenter, collapsed in a day. Then the lesson
of the plant is given, and Rose here elaborates the analogy, stressing
that as God created the people of Nineveh so did God love those people.
The contemporary relevance of the lesson is detailed in a kind of ser-
'monette with which Jonah concludes his presentation to the missions
conferees. "It is not an option with y0u; it is the command of God."

Those attending this conference ". . . need to have the heart of God . . ."

104
in expressing concern for all peoples. Christians have, in addition to
Jonah's lesson in God's love, the Christ whom God wants made available to
all the world. The conferees readily concur, and the piece ends with a
vocal Solo emphasizing a Christological understanding of divine for-
giveness.

The final two dramas in the present group are intended not only to
impart moral or ethical truths but also to inspire members of the audi-
ence to a decision or action. This is not to suggest that the writers
considered above have no interest in affecting behavior. But whereas the
playwrights discussed above appear to rely upon the force of the argument
or clarity in stating the case, the dramatists now to be considered also
seek to evoke an emotional response.

In his modernization of the Jonah story David Campton works exclu-
sively with parallels to the incidents recorded in the Bible; however,
the miracles have no counterparts. Each of the events of the Biblical
Jonah's career becomes a kind of simile for an episode in this contem-
porary retelling of the story. Campton's Jonah is written as a long one-
act drama, though the author indicates a point at which an intermission
nay be taken if desired.63 Dialogue alternates between prose passages
and short stichomythic exchanges. The rhythmic contrast is marked, with
the prose speeches more reflective in content and tempo and often serving
to reveal character, and the rapid-fire free verse stichomythy frequently
building in intensity, affording the characters the opportunity to speak

from a more abstract point of view. An example of the latter style is

 

53 David Campton, Jonah; A Play (London: J. Garnet Miller, 1972).
The play was commissioned by the Chelmsford Cathedral Arts Council for
production in the cathedral in November, 1971.

105
the cathedral cleaning women's commenting not simply as themselves but
also on themselves in response to Jonah's call to ". . . turn from your
wickedness . . ."
SECOND CLEANER: We all have our little faults.
FIRST CLEANER: But we'd rather not have them brought up.

SECOND CLEANER: Not here, of all places.

SECOND CLEANER: I don't quite follow.
FIRST CLEANER: I'd rather not follow.
SECOND CLEANER: If we followed, we might be upset. (p. 29)
Campton's Jonah shares with Robert Frost's Jonas Dove a passionate
commitment to and identification with the princip1e of justice.54 Late
in the play after the prophesied holocaust has failed to occur Jonah
says, "I worshipped Justice," to which the Grey Figure replies, "It might
have been better to have worshipped God." (p. 60) Jonah's impatience
with the ethical shortcomings of humankind has made him a misanthrope.
This is a wicked world. I'm not a man given to pronouncements. I
avoid public meetings. What you do with your own lives is no
concern of mine. And if my neighbor chooses to drive down to Hell,
I'll not bar his way. I believe in Justice. Sooner or later the
wrong-doer will be punished. Not perhaps by the man-made legal
system, which is a flimsy, cobbled up piece of machinery at best;
but at the end by God. (pp. 9-10)
After he has received his commission and delivered his denunciations, a
megalomania colors his desire to watch his contemporaries violently
destroyed. And he reveals himself as an egomaniac in his reaction to the

sparing of the people.

I am immovable. God nay vacillate, but here I stand. A rock.

 

54 See the discussion of Frost's A Mosque of'Mercy in chapter six,
pp..137—144.

106
He asks the Grey Figure the meaning, for him personally, of this betrayal
of his prophetic utterance.

JONAH: A rebuke?

GREY FIGURE: A reminder.

JONAH: That I am the one singled out for punishment--the only one
from that crawling dungheap. Was this vast charade staged
merely for my benefit? The resources of Heaven mustered to
crush one maggot? Kill me then. Grind me underfoot. If you
have a thunderbolt to spare, hurl it in this direction.

(pp. 60-61)

Jonah is nonetheless not primarily a character study, nor an expli-
cation of the inadequacies of a strict justice. Both the personality of
the prophet and his myopic devotion to justice are employed by the
dramatist finally to vindicate the merciful ways of God and to emphasize
their implications for human attitudes and behavior.

The setting is a church sanctuary. The service having concluded,
most of the congregation is leaving. Jonah stands apart, commenting
dourly on the actions of a Drunk; a Boy in amorous pursuit of a willing
Girl; two Businessmen engaged in clandestine speculation; a Dowdy Woman
enviously touting the physical virtues of her companion, a Grand Lady;
and a Violent Man who stalks and murders a second killer. A Grey Figure
appears to Jonah to inform him that he is to warn the people of their
imminent doom. Jonah, however, doubts that God will actually deliver
such a judgment.

Such things don't happen these days. Not like Gomorrah. No.

He desires at least some proof of the Grey Figure's authority. "A tiny
miracle" would do (p. 13). Otherwise Jonah would prefer simply to

continue complaining about the state of humankind. Jonah argues that he

is ". . . not the man to sway multitudes," and insists that he will

107
emigrate rather than accept the commission. The whale is referred to
only at this point, and jokingly, and is dismissed by both Jonah and the
Grey Figure.

FIGURE: What has been commanded has been commanded.

JONAH: Would God resort to direct action? 'Have one swallowed by a
whale perhaps, and spewed up in the appointed place. I won't
do it.

FIGURE: God's ways can be more subtle. (p. 18)

The Grey Figure then arranges that Jonah observe the results of his
refusal to carry out God's orders, in what Campton refers to as "the
hallucination scene."65 "A trumpet wails like a siren," as both a
heralding of the Last Judgment and a reminder of war-time air raids
(p. 18). Rumblings are heard, the building shakes, and flames flicker on
the walls. The characters whom Jonah had observed earlier return seeking
sanctuary. People outside are described burning and dying horribly.
Jonah is accused of knowing what was coming and failing to give warning.
Left to himself again, Jonah hears a Voice which informs him that he
alone has survived. Jonah is certain that justice has been served, but
finds his present situation less than desirable. The Voice points out
that there nay well have been a few other just persons in the city, who
because of Jonah's reluctance to seek them out are now destroyed along
with the wicked. Jonah begins to crumble. "It was bad enough being one
just man among all the.unrighteous, but it's worse being without the
unrighteous." The Voice continues ironically to repeat "Justice." Jonah
in his loneliness finally cries out, ". . . take me, too . . . Don't

leave me here." (p. 27)

 

55 Campton, Notes, p. 5.

108
Jonah is awakened by the Cleaners, realizes that he has experienced
only a dream or vision, and immediately begins to call: "Repent."

Jonah's wife and two children hurry in, embarrassed by his behavior.

Jonah quizzes his family as to whether they have been ". . . pure in

thought, word, and deed." (p. 30) They reply that they are guiltless of

the kinds of major sins associated with the Old Testament commandments.
MISS JONAH: We haven't robbed any widows or orphans.
YOUNG JONAH: Or worshipped false gods.
MISS JONAH: Or blasphemed.
YOUNG JONAH: Or lied.
MISS JONAH: Much.
YOUNG JONAH: Lately.
MISS JONAH: And we honour our father and mother.

But Jonah turns these ethical imperatives into contemporary peccadillos.
I mean the straying eye, the murderous impulse, the furtive ges-
ture, the convenient deception, the undetected surrender to tempta-
tion. When did you last steal a ride without paying? or come home
late and lie about the traffic? or claim first class expenses for a
second class journey? or take the credit for your junior's ideas?
When did you glimpse a skirt riding high, and speculate . . .?

(pp. 31-32)

Jonah at first is able to convince only the Drunk to take seriously his

prophesied judgment. Then he virtually pummels the Violent Man into a

state of fear, and finally all of the characters grow nervous and take up

the chant:
Repent. Believe. Turn to the Lord. (p. 38)

Jonah insists that all that can be done is to prepare to die well.

Alone, Jonah points out that he has done as instructed, and suggests

that God can now proceed with the destruction. Voices are heard singing

the hymn "Praise my Soul, the King of Heaven," and Jonah discovers that

109
everyone except the Drunk is behaving righteously. Then Jonah wonders
what he is to do next, since doubtless the people in a short time will
backslide. Furthermore, they are going to want to know when they nay
expect the end, and Jonah has no answer to this question. If Jonah
cannot provide the answer the people will disbelieve his prophecy alto-
gether, and will turn against him. The Violent Man overhears Jonah's
address to God and is convinced that the prophet is a fraud.

That the widespread penance is somewhat calculated is demonstrated
in the citizens requesting that Jonah pass on to the Almighty word of
their improved behavior. A delegation arrives having raised funds for a
new stained glass window depicting scenes of God's deliverance of peoples
and individuals.

SECOND BUSINESSMAN: A reminder.

FIRST BUSINESSMAN: For us, of course.

SECOND BUSINESSMAN: But perhaps, also . . .

FIRST BUSINESSMAN: For Him. (pp. 47-48)

They request Jonah to take charge of the unveiling of the window. His
family expresses the pride they now feel in him. Jonah is not at all
inclined to take part in this ceremony and its celebration of God's
mercy. But the Violent Man raises the doubts about Jonah's credentials,
asking whether his refusal to unveil the window is ". . . because it is a
monument to your deceit?" (p. 51) So Jonah capitulates, and is further
goaded into announcing the time of the destruction. "At noon on Thursday
week," he says, the scheduled time of the unveiling (p. 53). Jonah now
informs the Grey Figure that the destruction must occur at the moment he
has been forced to specify, or the converts will be lost.

At the appointed hour the people process to a recitation of Psalm

CE

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110

39. Jonah unveils the window and the sanctuary is flooded with multi-
colored light. When the destruction fails to occur the people leave,

after thanking Jonah. "For putting in a word to--you-know-who." (p. 58)

But Jonah refuses to leave, complaining: "God uses Jonah as his fool."

He can feel only humiliation, self-pity, and indignation over ". . . crimes
unpunished, sins condoned." The Grey Figure asks whether he cannot be

glad that children and small animals have been spared. Jonah replies:

Justice is blind. I worshipped Justice. (p. 60)

He asks to be killed. He insists that God's mercy is simply weakness,
and asks for the destruction at least of the stained glass window which
celebrates that weakness. The Grey Figure offers Jonah a stone with
which he himself can break the window. But Jonah hesitates. It is,
after all, his window-~"The Jonah Window." He offers a variety of
excuses for his inability to engage in this act of vandalism. And
Campton then makes of this incident the Biblical lesson of the vine. The
Grey Figure points out: "You cannot break one piece of glass, and yet you
expect God to obliterate a city." (p. 62)

The final exchange is between Jonah and his family. The "message"
of the play emerges as the admonition to look forward to the future
rather than back at past errors.

JONAH: I assumed an authority that did not belong to me. I am
guilty of forgery and false pretenses. If this is my punish-
ment, I accept it.

MISS JONAH: We wish you wouldn't worry SO'MUCh about punishment.

YOUNG JONAH: Punishment always neans looking back to what has been
done.

MISS JONAH: We'd rather look forward to what might be done.
They steer JONAH towards an exit.

YOUNG JONAH: It's amazing what a touch of forgiveness can do.

111

JONAH stops and tries to look back to where the GREY FIGURE
has disappeared.

JONAH: He . . .
MISS JONAH: No, don't look back. Look forward.

YOUNG JONAH: That's right. Come on.
Together they lead JONAH out.

The emotionally charged scenes throughout the play, and in particular
Jonah's passion and vehemence, together with the tone of the closing
dialogue suggest that impelling the audience to a change in attitude and
behavior is as important as the more intellectual process of "teaching"
the lesson of forgiveness and its implications for behavior. Campton's
Jonah is thus at least as "inspirational" in intent as it is didactic.

Marion Fairman begins her In the Belly of'the Fish with a short
passage of verse, followed by a breezy television interview with Jonah,
and concluding with a longer poetic passage intended to excite as an
emotional response the conviction that through faith in God one can find
true freedom.66 The belly of the fish becomes a metaphor for the uni-
versal human experience of bondage until such time as obedience to God
results in one's being set free by God. The metaphor is further extended
to embrace the New Testament motif of "the sign of Jonah," as Christ's
death and return from the dead are seen as the certainty of God's turning
death into life, despair into faith.

Both In the Belly of the Fish and The Ruined Garden, the latter
dealing with Adam and Eve, are intended to be performed within a worship
service in place of the sermon. The relevant Scripture lesson (for In

the Belly of the Fish Jonah 1:1-5, 12-17; 2:1-10) is to be read. Both

 

66 Marion [A.J Fairman, In the Belly of the Fish, in The Ruined
Garden and In the Belly of'the Fish (Downers Grove, IL: Contemporary
Drama Service, 1971), pp. 7-14.

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112
dramas call for a chorus of from four to twenty individuals dressed in
robes, a leader in a gown, and two players in modern dress. Properties
are few and simple; in the "Jonah" play only a newspaper is used (p. 7;
and see The Ruined Garden, p. 1).

The play opens with the Leader at the pulpit as though beginning to
deliver the sermon. His speech is at the outset in rhymed iambic verse,
but shortly shifts into an unrhymed free verse form. The latter, except
for occasionally recurring iambic passages, remains the poetic convention
in the play. The Leader's two short stanzas introduce the theme of man
as fleeing and afraid. Jonah is revealed crouched in a ball because the
belly of the fish does not allow room for him to extend himself to his
full length. A woman appears ". . . at lectern or on a raised platform
to one side" to conduct a "Person to Person" television interview with
Jonah (p. 8). The interview scene is in prose. The conversation is for
the most part superficial, dealing with such matters as the properties of
fish blubber, the location of television cameras, the peculiarities of
the fish which is apparently ". . . constructed for the express purpose
of swallowing man," and the fact that Jonah and the fish appear to
" . . feed on each other." (p. 10)67 Jonah eventually explains that he
was simply journeying to Tarshish when this unexpected incident occurred,
whereupon the Woman points out that according to the newspaper he had
been instructed to go to Nineveh. Nineveh, Jonah replies, is a crowded
and crime-ridden city and no fit place to live. As has been noted, the

woman and Jonah are to be costumed in modern dress, and the newspaper

 

57 Fairman has based this conversation on Dostoevsky's story "The
Crocodile," as is revealed in her essay in Biblical Patterns in modern
Literature, p. 76. See Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Crocodile," in William
Phillips, ed., The Short Stories of Dostoevsky (New York: Dial, 1946),
pp. 463-504.

The

113
suggests a contemporary setting. But the single direct reference to
modern times is an opaque one, as Jonah suggests that he may write a book
about his life in the belly of the fish. "Everyone else in the twentieth
century has." (p. 11)68 Finding the interview difficult, the Woman ends
it abruptly and leaves, as Jonah cries to her to remain and not leave him
alone.

At this point the Chorus takes over to generalize upon the theme of
solitude and fear. The Leader is assigned a verse passage which stresses
both our reluctance to show human beings themselves "stripped naked" and
our guilt if we fail to take on that responsibility. "Forgive us,
Lord/if we should send each other away, empty-handed." (p. 12) Jonah
finally prays, and the Chorus explains:

Now is the meaning plain!

At the point of no return

In the belly of the fish

We grope blindly;

Bump against ourselves

Until we agree to accept,

To accept God without condition. (p. 13)

The Leader reads the Biblical line telling of Jonah's deliverance onto
dry land, and Jonah exults in his freedom. The Chorus then rather
abruptly asks for "a sign." The Leader introduces the passage from
Matthew 12:39-40 specifying Jonah as a "sign" pointing to Christ. In

alternating lines the Chorus and the Leader together draw the lesson that

God indeed came in the flesh to humankind to demonstrate the nature

 

53 The reference seems a private one on the part of the playwright.
In her essay "In the Belly of the Fish," published at close to the same
time as her drama with that title. Fairman discusses a variety of
novels, stories, and dramas which she believes to express a Jonah-in-
the-belly theme. Fairman, "In the Belly of the Fish," in Biblical
Patterns in Modern Literature, pp. 67-83. A number of the ideas sug-
gested in her-short play will be found explored in this essay. See
especially pp. 67-68, 73-75, 82-83.

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114
of death and life.59 The congregation is left with a visual reminder of
the theme as Jonah remains

. in outstretched position with head thrown back until end. He
may exit during the prayer or benediction following the play.

(p. 14) -

The moral-lesson play, on the whole, affords greater insight into
the writer's particular moral stance than into either the Biblical
source or its contemporary relevance. Dramatic coherence and genuinely
theatrical effectiveness tend to give way to contrivance for the sake of
didactic clarity. An emotionally-charged or "inspirational" tone does
not appear, in itself, to affect this pattern, as is evidenced in
Fairman's short play. Campton's Jonah will engage an audience through
qualities in the playwriting quite apart from either the moralizing or
the "inspiration." The effectiveness of Lodge and Greene's A Looking-
Glass is the result of the authors' working knowledge of theatrical,

rather than simply didactic, devices and conventions.

 

59 In another literary borrowing, Fairman has given to her Chorus
the designation of one's release from the belly of the fish, upon
recognition of the truth of God, as an ". . . escape./Not from truth--
/But from despair;/. . . a narrow escape/Into faith." (p. 14) The line
is from Christopher Fry, "Comedy," in Robert W. Corrigan, ed., Comedy: A
Critical Anthology (Boston, etc.: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), p. 755. See
Fairman, Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature, p. 81.

W7.-
GO!

CHAPTER FIVE

Comic Treatments of Jonah

Certain strains of Biblical interpretation provide a warrant,
assuming one be needed, for a comic treatment of the Jonah story. Edwin
M. Good in his essay "Jonah: The Absurdity of God" discusses the book of
Jonah as a satire. Assuming the book to be post-exilic, Good maintains
that in holding Jonah up to ridicule the author may well be protesting
the Israelites' prevailing intense materialism and xenophobia. The mood
of the work is ironic, and the comic literary devices employed include

incongruity, exaggeration, and the ludicrous.1

 

1 Good, pp. 39-55. Good cites two commentators, Lods and Stinespring,
who have suggested that the writer's purpose may have been satirical.
Good, p. 41, nn. 3, 5. His reference is first to Adolphe Lods:

The curious book of Jonah is a satire, as generous as it is
witty, directed against the exclusiveness of certain Jews who were
shocked at God's patience with heathen nations.

The book of Jonah is an amusing satire directed against those who
desired the annihilation, rather than the conversion, of heathen
nations . . .

Lods, The Prophets and the Rise of’Judoism, trans. S. H. Hooke (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1937), pp. 15-16, 334-335.

Good's second reference is to W. F. Stinespring:

The book of Jonah presents a satire . . . like that of the earlier
prophets. A broadminded Jew ridicules his own people, represented
by the rebellious prophet, Jonah, for their lack of missionary
zeal, prejudice against foreigners, and their failure to understand
a God of love.

Stinespring, "Irony and Satire," in George Arthur Buttrick et al, eds.,
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia,
vol. 2 (New York and Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), p. 78.

Good finds no other commentators who have perceived the book of Jonah as
satirical, and none who has seen it as ironic. John Mauchline, however,

115

116
A second view of the book of Jonah as comic, though certainly

not excluding the elements of irony or satire, emphasizes rather what

 

though without employing the term, implies an irony in Jonah's fleeing
out of distaste for the Ninevites and the possibility of their salvation,
and entrusting " . . . himself for this purpose to a group of the
heathen whom he has so thoroughly despised"; and in these heathens'
attempt to spare Jonah his drowning, and their sacrifice to the prophet's
god. And again, in 4:24, Jonah " . . . contrasts the mercy and the love
of God with his own selfishness and churlishness" without realizing what
he is saying. Mauchline, pp. 43, 44. Scholars after Good appear to have
followed more readily this line of thought. The New Oxford Annotated
Bible considers Jonah's conversion of the heathen, both at sea and at
Nineveh, "ironical." Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, eds., The New
Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University, 1962, 1973), p.
1120. The commentary in The Jerusalem Bible reads:

The book is intended to amuse and instruct . . . All the characters
of this story are likeable, the pagan sailors, the king, the popu-
lace, even the animals of Nineveh, all except the only Israelite on
stage and he a prophet! . . . the story is told with undisguised
irony . . .

Alexander Jones, gen. ed., The Jerusalem Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1966). p. 1141.

Leslie C. Allen avers that the " . . . literary tone is that of parody or
satire," and that Jonah is a "ridiculous figure. . . . Behind him must
stand a group of people whose mouthpiece Jonah is or whom Jonah carica-
tures . . ." He also agrees with Good that Jonah's request that he be
allowed to die is a "subtle piece of ironic satire." Allen, p. 51.
Millar Burrows affirms that Jonah is a satirical work, with Jonah made to
appear ridiculous at every point in the narrative. Burrows, "The Literary
Category of the Book of Jonah," in Harry Thomas Frank and William L.
Reed, Translating and Understanding the Old Testament: Essays in Honor of
Herbert Gordon May (Nashville and New York: Abingdon, 1970). pp. 95-96.
B. Davie Napier considers the work "winsome, imaginative . . . slyest,
deftest, most tongue-in-cheek, most charming and humorous . . ." Napier,
p. 366. Elias Bickerman provides some historical perspective on the
issue, citing commentators at the time of the Enlightenment basically
hostile to Biblical literature:

. . . from Bayle's Dictionary (1696) to Voltaire's La Bible enfin
expliquee [the philosophers] . . . made fun of Jonah's whale.
Shaftesbury (1711) facetiously likened the unwilling prophet to a
pettish truant boy, and Diderot (1746) opined that in his time Jonah
would be sent to an institution.

Bickerman, p. 19. For a compact retelling of the Jonah story emphasizing
the kind of irony perceived by Good, see Mary Ellen Chase, The Bible and
the common Reader (New York: Macmillan, 1946, 1952) pp. 236-240.

 

The re
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5 Ad d y

49 (0c

CIitus,

117
has been called "the story's prototypical Yiddish humor."2 Such inter-
pretation is found most fully developed in D. F. Rauber's "Jonah--the
Prophet as Shlemiel." Rauber cites many of the same humorous incidents
as does Good, and speaks of the writer's technique as employing the
devices of wit. irony, satire. outrageousness, parody, burlesque, incon-
, gruity, and exaggeration.3 But the fundamental difference in this second
approach has to do with the comic focus. In Good's view, the prophet
Jonah is seen more "objectively," as part of the ironic scheme of persons
and events. God, who possesses the perspective to appreciate the humor,
might be said to be the protagonist. In Rauber's view, however, Jonah is
subject as well as object of the humor. The reader is more conscious of
Jonah as initiator of the action rather than merely its passive vehicle.
There is even room--though the Biblical narrative itself may not directly
explore this possibility--for Jonah's wry appreciation of the humor in

his own situation.4 And Jonah can emerge, in this view, as a man capable

 

2 Thayer S. Warshaw, Teaching the Book of'JOnah as Literature
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Institute on Teaching the Bible in
Literature Classes, 1974, mimeographed), p. 13, n. 2. John Paterson,
treating the book as essentially a universalist tract, calls attention to
the distinctiveness of its moments of humor:

. . There is a quiet lambent humor pervading the story, and it is
not pushing matters too far if we interpret the story with a touch
of Semitic humor. For the book of Jonah is an illustration of
Hebrew humor. The Hebrews could really laugh, and what the writer
wanted here was to laugh a ridiculous attitude out of court.

There is "a gentle humor" in God's method of dealing with his prophet,
according to Paterson, as when God imparts a lesson through the use of a
shady plant, worm, and hot wind. Paterson, pp. 275, 278-280.

3 D. F. Rauber, "Jonah--The Prophet as Schlemiel," The Bible Today
49 (October, 1970) pp. 31, 33.

4 While bad luck can be ". . . attributed to the disfavor of God,
. . . the shlemiel knows somewhere that he himself stands behind the
wings as the stage manager of his own destiny. He knows, with Hera-
clitus, that a man's character is his fate." Theodor Reik, Jewish Wit

 

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118
of insight, shrewdness, and compassion, capable of eliciting from the
reader sympathy and even admiration. Necessarily, the allegorical thrust
of the work (Jonah as a type for a xenophobic Israel) is diminished in
this interpretation.

Rauber stresses, first, the highly intellectual character of the
sort of Jewish humor which he feels the book of Jonah exemplifies.
Borrowing two categories proposed by Leo Rosten, he posits that
". . . Jonah . . . illustrates the theme of 'reason gone mad,’ while the

Lord represents 'reason made mischievous.”5

In all of his courses of action

. . Jonah appears . . . fully as the man who is out of step with
everyone else, the man who never gets the word. He is a shlemieZ--a
born loser. If he had been at Pearl Harbor, he would probably have
thought it a fireworks display.5

 

(New York: Gamut, 1962), p. 41. The capacity for self-irony as a basis
for typical Jewish wit is discussed in Edmund Bergler, Laughter and the
Sense of’Humor (New York: Intercontinental Medical Book Corporation,
1956). Pp. 110-113.

5 Rauber, p. 31. The reference is to Leo Rosten, The Jays of
Yiddish (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), p. xxiv. Rosten sees Sholom
Aleichem as epitomizing the latter, Groucho Marx the former. Bergler,
taking issue with a view of Jewish humor as highly rational and logical,
states: " . the opposite is true: the purpose of the Jewish joke is
reducing reason to absurdity." Bergler, p. 112.

5 Rauber, p. 32. Rosten offers the following definitions of the
shlemiel:

1. A foolish person; a simpleton . . .

2. A consistently unlucky or unfortunate person; a "fall guy"; a
hard-luck type; a born loser; a submissive and uncomplaining
victim . . .

3. A clumsy, butterfingered, all-thumbs, gauche type . . .

4. A social misfit, congenitally maladjusted . . .

5. A pipsqueak, a Caspar Milquetoast . . .

6. A naive, trusting gullible customer . . .

7. Anyone who makes a foolish bargain, or wagers a foolish bet.

The shlemiel, nevertheless, is always to some extent responsible for his

119
But Jonah is rescued from being only shlemiel. His "reason" may be
"mad," but it is reason nonetheless. Jonah should have perceived Nineveh's
"virtual orgy of repentance" as proof of his being "suddenly transformed
from born loser into the biggest winner of all . . ."7 Instead he is
vexed. He holds up to Yahweh the unreasonableness of the present cir-
cumstance.
Jonah's argument goes something like this: "You gave me a commission
as a denouncing prophet, calling upon me to preach destruction upon
this city. But I knew, I knew from the very beginning, that you
would renege. How did I know? I was absolutely convinced of your
enormous mercy and your love. This being so, I realized at once
that you were setting me up to be a fool and a liar. Really, Lord,
you are a great trial to a man. But, you did issue the commission
of destruction, and I did carry it out, although under protest.
Now, the very least you can do is be faithful to your word."
Jonah is, after all, not only sehZemieZ but "mensh--a real man."8
The comic treatments of Jonah are confined to a three-decade period,
having made their appearance between 1920 and 1950. The comic dramas
largely antedate the scholarly interpretations of Jonah as satire or

comedy, only two of which were published before the 19605 and 705.9

 

own situation, as Rosten carefully distinguishes the type from the nebeeh,
defined as:

An innocuous, ineffectual, weak, helpless or hapless unfortunate. A
Sad Sack . . . A nonentity; "a nothing of a person." . . . A nebeeh
is more to be pitied than a shlemiel. You feel sorry for a nebeeh;
you can dislike a shlemiel.

Rosten, pp. 344, 261. See also Hirschel Revel, "Shlemiel and Shlimmazel,"
in Isaac Landman, ed., The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New
York: Krav Publishing House, 1969), p. 511, for further background on the
term shlemiel, here defined as " . . . one who handles a situation in the
worst possible manner, or is dogged by an ill luck that is more or less
due to his own ineptness"; and Reik's analysis in Jewish Wit, pp. 99-101.

7 Rauber, p. 33.
8 Ibid., p. 34.

9 The relatively brief suggestion made by Lods in 1937 and the
account by Chase first published in 1944. See note 1, above.

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120
The relatively brief Jonah-as-comedy era was ushered in by A. P.
Herbert, through his short The Book of Jonah (As almost any modern

Irishman would have written it).10 The play is a piece of burlesque
intended for the reader rather than for production. There is no intent
here to explore the Biblical source, but rather the book of Jonah serves
Herbert as a vehicle for whimsical commentary on the Irish character and
on the British government.

In Herbert's play Jonah becomes Michael Flannigan Joner who as a
postal office employee travels for the government. Joner returns from
his sojourn in the whale and rescue from an uncharted island, to find
that a statue of himself as a martyr has been erected and that his wife
is about to remarry. Confronted by the loss of both Mrs. Joner's gov-
ernment pension and the possible revenues from sightseers come to view
the statue, it is determined that Joner shall turn a profit through the
telling of his whale story.

At the beginning of Hammond B. Gayfer's The Subsequent History of
Mr. Jonah a narrator (The Ancient One) summarizes the events of the
Biblical story.ll Otherwise, the play does not deal with these events.
Rather, as in A. P. Herbert's dramatization, it presents their hypo-
thetical aftermath. Mrs. Jonah has resolved to divorce her husband. The
issue this time is not that she had believed him dead, but that she

believes him a liar and a good candidate for lawsuit on the grounds

 

10 A[lan] P[atrick] Herbert, The Book of Jonah (As almost any
modern Irishman would have written it), in The London Mercury 3 (1921),
pp. 602-605.

11 Hamnond B. Gayfer, The Subsequent History of Mr. Jonah: A Farce
in 078 Act (New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London: Samuel French, 1936,
1938 .

121
of desertion and probable infidelity. The one-act play, then, concerns
the Jonahs' divorce proceedings. The focus of the play is not on Jonah's
prophecies but on whether or not he was actually swallowed and subse-
quently spewed forth by a whale/fish/leviathan. The Judge grants the
divorce, but without alimony. Jonah leaves with both the Little Blonde
Juror and the great load of ambergris deposited with him on the shore.

The play is little more than a series of loosely-connected jokes.
The language tends to be inflated presumably for comic effect. Stereo-
typed characters and stage dialects abound.

Lisl Beer's puppet play Jonah and the Whale frankly exploits the
farcical possibilities in the Jonah narrative.12 The henpecked Jonah
gives as his excuse for not going to Nineveh that he must finish making
the sewing box for his wife Mehitabel, who upon learning of Jonah's call
from the Lord hides the prophet in a flour barrel. 0n the ship to
Tarshish Jonah experiences intense sea-sickness during the storm, and is
thrown overboard. The third scene introduces the Whale.as a talking
character.13 Jonah complains that the Whale's insides are dark and
lonely; the Whale complains that Jonah tickles. The scene ends with

Jonah deposited on shore.

 

12 Lisl Beer, Jonah and the Whale: an Original Play for Hand Puppets
(Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1961). The play was first produced in 1949.

13 James Bridie, on whom see below, pp. 122-132, in his stage and
radio versions appears to have been the first dramatist to present a
talking whale. The device was introduced earlier, in non-dramatic
literature, in Robert Nathan's novel Jonah, where the whale converses
with God and with Jonah, pp. 178-179, 197-201. The character Leviathan
speaks in L. V. Snowman's "closet drama" A Second Chapter of “Jonah,"
published in 1924. This treatment is discussed in chapter three, pp.
57-60.

 

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122

In the final scene Jonah returns home, whereupon Mehitabel begins
beating him with a rolling pin. The Lord intervenes in Jonah's behalf,
and Jonah ends up boss of his house. He resolves to go to Nineveh after
dinner to carry out his appointed task. The play itself thus contains no
Nineveh scene. The mood of the play is that of pure whimsy and farce,
with no intent to explore the Wmeaning" of the Biblical Work or to pro-
vide anything other than entertainment for the contemporary children's
audience.

The first fully comic treatment of Jonah intended for stage pro-
duction was Scottish playwright James Bridie's Jonah and the Whale in

1932.14 It is Bridie's work that comes closest to realizing in

 

14 Bridie, Jonah and the Whale. Murray Roston considers Bridie, if
not quite the first playwright to employ humor in Biblical drama, at any
rate the first successful one. Roston cites the earlier Judith by
Arnold Bennett in 1918 as somewhat anticipating Bridie in this regard.
Roston, p. 248. '

James A. Michie in his "Educating the Prophets" discusses Bridie's
humor, irony, and satire. Though Michie does not specify the version to
which he is referring, the plot summary makes clear that he is dealing
with Bridie's third version, Jonah 3. Michie, "Educating the Prophets,"
in Modern Drama 11:4 (February, 1969), pp. 429-431. Michie stresses the
continuity between the Biblical writer's-view and that of Bridie:

Humour, varying from the boisterous to the oblique, from the gently
mocking to the astringently ironic, is the powerful solvent of
Spiritual complacency, ignorant and illiberal narrow-mindedness,
and obdurate egoism. It is a humour that stems ultimately from
compassion. This . . . was a quality which Bridie shared with the
Old Testament author . . . Both obviously hated smug exclusiveness
and intolerance; both disliked men whose religion separated them
from other people; and both esteemed humility.

Michie, p. 429.

Roston lists a number of Bridie's humorous devices, though without
indicating any particular precedent in the Biblical story. Roston,
p. 279.

Eric Linklater offers an entertaining portrait of the dramatist as
embodying in his own behavior the kind of comic outlook he evidences in
his plays. Linklater, "James Bridie," in The Art of'Aduenture (London:
Macmillan, 1948), pp. 25-43. Linklater affirms Bridie's ". . . prevailing

123
dramatic form Good's thesis concerning the Biblical source as ironic and
satirical. Bridie, however, does not present Jonah as the prototype for
a jingoistic Israel so much as a representative of fallible humankind in
general. Early in the play Jonah explains to the visiting commercial
traveller Bilshan that the prosperity of the town is the result of his

never ceasing to . wrestle with it and intercede with Yahweh for
it . . . ," a matter largely of suppressing the people's manifold vices
(p. 12). The people are not unappreciative of his importance and of his
signal efforts on their behalf.

HASHMONAH: Jonah, the son of Amittai, has no soft side.

SHUAL: A fine soul. An excellent soul. We are very proud
of him.

JOSIBIAH: He has done some great work in this parish and in others.

 

interest in the old contest between Good and Evil . . ., and suggests
that the typical critical cavil at his dramatic looseness or inconclu-
siveness stems from a failure to appreciate his method. In the context
of discussing the dramatization of Jonah, Linklater insists that

. . an argument is the basic structure of many of his plays. They
often resemble an intellectual wrestling—match, and his typical
wrestlers are agile, brawny, and urbane. But in addition to the
principal or basic argument there is always a company of little
arguments, of lightweight wrestling-matches, for his conception of
dramatic dialogue is a perpetual contest of opponent ideas or rival
wits. His characters toss their ideas into the ring, and there they
grapple and throw each other about in the liveliest manner, until
they are succeeded by another pair. It is exhilarating to listen to
a Bridie play in much the same way as it is exhilarating to watch a
nimble bout of catch-as—catch-can. Sometimes, indeed, the very act
of listening seems to become an athletic experience.

Linklater, pp. 35, 38. If James Bridie's drama appears paradoxically to
draw simultaneous praise for its trenchant satirical seriousness and
damnation or dismissal for its frivolous superficiality, the cause nay be
illuminated in the playwright's own observation that

. . if'you want to insult humanity, you must insult it in comedy.
Not in a tragedy; it wouldn't be decent.

Quoted in Linklater, p. 43.

124
HASHMONAH: The taverns are empty. The meetinghouses are full.
The old practice repentance and even the young people
have grown modest and thoughtful . . . (p. 9)
The touch of irony in this rather conventional ritual of praise for the
prophet, however, becomes fully revealed when at the end of the first act
the townspeople express their great relief at the departure for Nineveh
of this stern keeper of their morals.

It is with sarcasm that the Whale, appearing first to Jonah in a
dream, refers to his importance and renown not only in Gittah-Hepher but
even throughout the entire province of Zebulun! (p. 30) But Jonah's
repute is not only parochial, it is based on oratorical show and a degree
of sham sustained by his parishioners. The girl Euodias tells him
ingenuously:

. when Josibiah speaks we all know what he's talking about, but
we never know what you're talking about. . . except, of course, when
you're talking about sin . . . and even then you tell us about a lot

of sins we never even heard of.

. . . it's marvellous to hear you speak, Jonah. I think if you only
recited the alphabet it would make us all cry. (p. 17)

Bilshan slyly suggests that Jonah's vaunted gifts are quite familiar in
his trade under the label "salesmanship."

Before the first act is over, however, the audience is allowed to
glimpse Jonah's anxieties and self-doubts--his humanness. Bridie in-
structs the actor playing Jonah, to ". . . convey, without extravagance
of gesture, that Jonah is a tormented man, seeking contact with his God."
(p. 19) Euodias learns that Jonah is having second thoughts about going
to Nineveh, and offers him the supreme insult "Cowardly Custard." She
suggests that he has no special power to strike anyone dead and is no
good as a prophet, to which Jonah replies:

Yes. That's true. I can't. And I'm no good at all. (p. 19)

125
On board ship he maintains for a time for the benefit of Bilshan the
pretense that he is not Jonah the prophet, but then forsakes the pro-
tective pose and makes full confession of his cowardice. (pp. 25-28)

When he finally arrives in Nineveh in the third act, Jonah is a
changed man. Having discarded his travelling clothes to appear "once
more in seemly rags" (p. 45), he delivers in strictly no-nonsense fashion
the message of doom. The lessons Jonah has to learn are not at an end.
But we do not again see him either exuding self-importance or running
from responsibility. He has perhaps, in Rauber's terms, became not
shlemiel but mensh.

In his final lines in the play Jonah recognizes three truths which
he has been forced to confront. First, the universalist lesson has come
in his realization of God's having spoken to him through such unlikely
messengers as the atheist commercial traveller Bilshan, the pagan Nine-
vite wonen Eshtemoa and Shiphrah, and the young girl Euodias. "And the
only time [the Voice of God] almost spoke to me directly was through
that noisy, boring, smelly whale." (p. 61) Second has been the uncomfortable
lesson that ". . . Yahweh may have a sense of humour"--an idea fer which
Bridie has already prepared his audience in Miss Huppelfeather's speech
at the conclusion of the prologue:

. . I have chosen the tale--

Perhaps you know it--of Jonah and the Whale.

Jonah, you know, grew angry with his God.

The Eternal Father thought the thing so odd

That He sat back among his seraphim

And with unspeakable majesty laughed at him.

That sunny laughter shining through the years

Of hatred, murder, misery and tears

Illumines still the queer old story. You

Perhaps may sit and laugh a little too

At Jonah and all prophets. They are men.
Perhaps the Lord will laugh at them again. (p. 3)

126
Third, Jonah has learned that he is, after all, "only an ordinary man."
(p. 61)15
Bridie, as is typical in his Biblical dramas, employs a variety of
anachronisms in "modernizing" his story. Occasional Yiddish expressions
occur in the dialogue. At the opening of the first act Josibiah is
telling two girls the tale of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." But in
his more sustained anachronisms the playwright's purpose is satirical
rather than merely playful. In the first act the character Jonah is an
unmistakable parody of a contemporary cleric, pompously adopting a
sagacity which is filtered through a fatuously pious humility. The
prophet complains to the sentry about a nail protruding from the town's
gateway.
JONAH (with a very formidable gentleness). I think I spoke about
this before. I am fallible, I may be in error. But I think I
spoke about this. (p. 9)
In being introduced a moment later to the stranger Bilshan, Jonah adds
the invariable professional philosophic profundity:

It is always a pleasure to meet a wanderer; though what are we all
but wanderers, if one looks below the surface of things? (p. 10)

The conversation turns immediately to a discussion of reality as objec-
tive or subjective, at which point Jonah evinces his readiness for formal
debate, dropping his "humility" pose, and proving quick to take insult.
A second example of the more sustained anachronism is the denunciation of

Nineveh which takes place in the context of a women's literary club

 

15 In his autobiography Bridie comments on his conviction that the
human individual may not be, in the overall scheme of things, of
extremely great importance, and that the universe is not necessarily
ordered for humankind's advantage or comfort. Bridie, One way of’Living,
pp. 132-133.

127
meeting, to which the visiting prophet has been invited to speak on the
topic "The Approaching Doom.‘I (p. 47)16

In the character of the Whale Bridie introduces his most whimsical
element. First speaking to Jonah in the latter's dream in Scene One of
the second act, the Whale sounds rather fearsome and ominous. He pro-
poses the thesis that, from a God's-eye view, prophets such as Jonah
are predominantly a Subject for mirth. In the second scene the Whale
appears more personable in his address, though Bridie calls for the voice
to bellow "from a dozen amplifiers in the auditorium." (p. 36) The Whale
rambles on about the wonders of the world encountered in his travels,
incidentally propounding the atomic theory of matter. Unable any longer
to endure his three-day thirst, he ingests a mighty drink of water and in
an instantaneous change of scene deposits Jonah on shore.

The difference in perspective between man and woman is hardly a
novel theme in drama or in literature more generally. Bridie's own
serio-comic version of the theme can be seen recurring and evolving
through his plays. As a playwright Bridie is frequently likened to
George Bernard Shaw. That comparison may often be rather too uncritical,
but in terms of this particular thematic interest some similarities may
indeed be observed. Bridie depicts his heroines as enterprising, enig-
matic to the male view, optimistic, and displaying a concept of life
which accepts and even celebrates its apparent paradoxes. The heroes, by
contrast, tend to be more parochial in vision and loyalty, more rigid in

belief and behavior.

 

15 Bridie names the women's society the Semiramis Club. Semiramis
and her husband Ninus were the legendary founders of Babylon. In his
radio play, The Sign of the Prophet Jonah, which does not include the
women's club scene, Bridie names the ship Semiramis.

128

Jonah and the Whale illustrates Bridie's nature-of-woman motif, to
be more completely realized in such later Biblical comedies as Susannah
and the Elders and What Say They?17 Susannah may serve to illustrate the
maturation of this motif. Susannah, greatly appreciative of life and
enthusiastic in cultivating varied friendships, is tricked into a com-
promising situation by two elderly and lecherous Babylonian judges whom
she has affectionately regarded as her "uncles." To protect themselves,
the judges manage to have Susannah accused of wanton behavior. The
prophet Daniel, sternly nationalistic and legalistic, through his shrewd
insight into the old men's natures and his courtroom adeptness, saves
Susannah's life and reputation.‘ Daniel admonishes her hereafter to avoid
situations which can lead to such trouble, and to "go home and pray."
(p. 63) Susannah wins the real contest, which is between herself and
Daniel. She refuses to set aside her belief in the essential goodness of
humankind or her determination to live her life in a joyful and affir-
mative fashion. She leaves Daniel staring into space, no longer entirely
assured that God speaks always unequivocably to and through him.

In Susannah and the Elders and What Say They? a woman is the pro-
tagonist. In Jonah and the Whale, however, Jonah is the central figure.

The germ of Bridie's life-affirming but somewhat inscrutable woman is in

 

17 Both plays appear in Bridie's Susannah and the Elders and Other
Plays (London: Constable, 1939). Susannah and the Elders is a dramati-
zation of the Old Testament Aprocryphal book of Susannah, What Say They?
a considerably disguised and modernized adaptation of the book of Esther.
Bridie's tongue—in-cheek "A Lecture on Women" appears in One Way of
Living, pp. 194-209. This piece in its concluding paragraphs takes up
what Bridie depicts as the horror 0f women in self-organized movements or
societies. His description of the phenomenon may furnish some insight
into the ladies' club scene of Jonah and the Whale.

129
Jonah and the Whale seen in two secondary female characters. The rapid
repentance of the Ninevites is as remarkable in the play as in the
Biblical account. But of particular interest is the change in Eshtemoa,
cultural bellwether in Nineveh and chairwoman of the ladies' society.
Unwilling to adopt less than civilized manners, she faces the city's

crisis with a thoughtful courage. She alone '. . . has not been af-
flicted with the sackcloth epidemic . . ." (p. 55) To Jonah's insistence
that she should occupy her final hours with more important matters than
dressing smartly Eshtemoa replies: "It takes generations of living among
important people to realize that nothing is very important." (p. 57)

Euodias, a young girl in Jonah's home town, similarly refuses to
adopt the somber, retiring attitude urged upon her by the town elders.

". . I mean if we all minded our own business, wouldn't we die of being
sick and tired of the horrible dullness of it?" (p. 5) As Jonah departs
ostensibly to carry out his Ninevite nfission, the final line of Act One
is Euodias' "Oh, hello! They're dancing! Wait for me, I'm coming!"

(1). 23)

It is from the young, winsomely impudent Euodias that Jonah has
actually derived the courage to make his initial decision--short-lived,
of course-~to go to Nineveh. Had Euodias been permitted to accompany the
prophet as she had requested, one imagines that Jonah's ignominious
episode at sea.nnght have been avoided. Euodias manages to turn up in
Nineveh, with both her means of travel and her purpose left to the
audience's conjecture, working as a cleaning maid in the women's society
meeting hall. She is thus on hand to accompany Jonah to the place chosen

for his vigil over the doomed city. At the end, still full of faith in

Jonah when he himself lacks it, she offers comfort and support.

130

As has been pointed out above, however, this is Jonah's and not the
woman's play. Euodias finally is unable to accept Jonah's claim to be no
more than an ordinary mortal or the highly unorthodox notion that God can

laugh.

For Bridie an attitude of rigorous, moralistic sobriety, seen char-
acteristically as part of the male temperament, is generally a subject
for ridicule. But the playwright is equally disdainful of a kind of
opposite, hedonistic position. In Susannah and the Elders the Greek
tourist Dionysos, devoted to the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh,
is shown to be an extremely shallow individual. The same judgement in

Jonah and the Whale is rendered the commercial traveller Bilshan.

Although Bridie has followed in sequence the events of the Biblical
narrative, adding characters and scenes to suit his comic and satiric
purpose, he has made a number of relatively minor changes for dramaturgic
or theatrical reasons. For example, Jonah makes the decision to journey
to Nineveh on his own without hearing any direct call from God. (PD. 14-
15) Thereupon he almost immediately has second thoughts_(p. 17), and
before long is giving Euodias excuses for the necessity of his remaining
in Gittah-Hepher. (pp. 18-19)

Bridie does include Jonah's psalm of deliverance, which no more than
paraphrases the Biblical version. It is delivered, however, not from the

belly of the whale but after Jonah's deposition on the shore. (PP. 59-60)18

 

18 Roston believes that Bridie has retained the psalm from the
Biblical source to mark a major transformation in the central character,
as Jonah becomes less a comic and more a tragic figure.

From the moment he accepts his fate as a prophet, Jonah is no
longer the ridiculous figure of Gitteh-Hepher but the inspired man
of God . . . the thanksgiving prayer . . . dignifying Jonah,

. restoring him to something of his traditional sanctity.

Roston, Pp. 281-282.

131

In 1942 Bridie wrote his radio drama The Sign of the Prophet Jo-
nah.19 Though some lines and bits of action from the earlier stage work
are employed, the radio version is shorter and its humor is limited to
the Whale's droll observations and to occasional segments of dialogue.
The play's conclusion lacks the three lessons Jonah has had to learn in
the earlier version. Rather the note finally struck appears that of the
Biblical book of Jonah, an affirmation of the unqualified mercy of God.

Later in 1942 Bridie wrote what he referred to as ". . . a war-time
version of my earlier play Jonah and the Whale."20 Although the same
title was used in production, he published the new version as Jonah 3,
since it was indeed his third dramatization of the Jonah story.21 The
number of characters is greatly reduced; and whereas the original Jonah
and the Whale had been constructed in three acts of two scenes each, the
later version consists of six scenes with no act divisions. Scenic
requirements are considerably simplified. The result is a faster-moving
drama, with the additional locales providing a heightened sense of
action.

Referring to the two previous versions, Bridie says of this third

dramatization: ". . . I was tempted to combine the two plays in a way

 

19 James Bridie, The Sign of the Prophet Jonah in Plays for Plain
People (London: Constable, 1944), pp. 277-298. Gerald Weales briefly
treats both the structural and the thematic differences between Jonah
and the Whale and The Sign of'the Prophet Jonah, p. 83.

20 Bridie, Plays for Plain People, Author's Note, p. 220.

21 Ibid., pp. 219-276. Roston, p. 281, mislabels Bridie's radio
version Jonah 3. Winifred Bannister mentions a fourth version ". . . pre-
pared later, for television . . . called simply Jonah [which] keeps
fairly closely to the final stage version, Jonah 3." In discussing
similarities between The Sign of'the Prophet Jonah and Jonah 3, it
should be noted, Bannister implies an erroneous chronology with respect
to the radio version. Bannister, p. 88.

132
which will make stage performance more practicable."22 Such combining is
precisely the method he has used. Large sections of both Jonah and the
Whale and The Sign of the Prophet Jonah are set virtually unchanged next
to each other, with linking dialogue or action provided as necessary.
The ironic satire of Jonah and the Whale is thus retained, but its focus
tends to be restricted to Jonah himself. The effect is made more ”ser-
ious" through the inclusion of much of the radio drama. At the conclu-
sion of the new version Jonah evinces much more bitterness, and seems
less inclined to accept the picture of himself which he has been forced
to view. Although the polarity between Prophet and Woman is suggested,
the theme is much less pronounced than in Jonah and the Whale.

The one Jonah play which could well be considered a dramatization of
Rauber's thesis--the prophet as shlemiel--is Wolf Mankowitz's short one-
act, six-scene, two-character It Should Happen to a 009.23 The comic
tradition reflected in the play is clearly Yiddish, as is the dialogue.
Isaiah Sheffer discusses the contemporary "Jewishness" characterizing
Mankowitz's play and Clifford Odets' The Flowering Peach:

Both Odets' Noah and Mankowitz's Jonah B. Ammittai [sic] resemble

the Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem's immortal character Tevya the

Dairyman in that they engage in conversations with God that are
meant to show a relationship at once intimate and long suffering,

 

22 Bridie, Plays for Plain People, p. 220.

23 In volume with four other plays, including The Mighty Hunter
which also employs a Biblical figure as one of the two characters. Wolf
Mankowitz, Five One-Act Plays (London and New York: Evans Brothers,
1956), pp. 46-56. Mankowitz's play does not, of course, draw directly on
Rauber's article, as the latter was published in 1970. Rosten unaccountably
views It Should.Happen to a Dog as "adapted" from the respective treat-
ments of Jonah by Herbert and Bridie. Rosten, p. 281, n. 2.

133

a relationship in which the browbeaten little man is not afraid to

take the Lord to task and to scold Him for His irritating and

impossible demands, like building an ark, or going to preach against

Nineveh.24

The playwright has made similar comments concerning his central
character. In a prefatory note Mankowitz recalls the Old Testament
manner of depicting the prophets:

. . . Jonah is somewhat familiar in his manner of address to the

Almighty . . . a greater intimacy exists between Prgghets and their

source of instruction than does for the rest of us.

Jonah B. Amittai appears as a travelling salesman. He flees, he
rationalizes his behavior, and he is able ultimately to appreciate the
joke on himself. He is buffeted about by God, usually after he has put
his foot in his mouth. An example is Jonah's assertion that he surely
would have gone to Nineveh if he had not become trapped in the whale,
just before he is vomited ashore at the foot of that very city. No
buffet of God's, moreover, is ever sufficient to suppress Jonah's wry
observations on the turn of events.

~In It Should Happen to a Dog, called by the author a "serio-comic

strip,"26 Mankowitz employs numerous anachronisms. This device he shares

with Bridie, though here the anachronisms tend to be not only more

 

24 Isaiah Sheffer, "A Survey of Major Recent Plays," in Edward 0.
Coleman, comp., The Bible in English Drama (New York: The New York Public
Library and KTAV Publishing House, 1968), p. x. (The 1968 edition of
Coleman's work is a reprint of the 1931 edition, with the addition of
Sheffer's essay.) Sheffer does not feel, however, that the dialogue of
either Odets or Mankowitz is the equal of that of Aleichem. Sheffer.

p. xi, identifies Mankowitz's Jonah as "a Jew from London's East End."
It might be noted that Mankowitz himself was born in that district of
London. See John Metcalf, "Wolf Mankowitz," Atlantic Monthly 198:4
(October, 1956). p. 88.

25 Mankowitz, p. 46.
26 Ibid.

134
abundant but more frequently for the sake of the quick joke. Among the
many examples are Jonah's list of wares, his complaint that he must
travel by ship because air flight has not yet been invented, and the
Tarshish newspaper. The staging is simple, requiring only a coat-stand
from which props can be hung, and a means for achieving thunder and
lightning effects. Costuming is to consist of a mixture of modern and
Biblical garb. The second character, Man, appears successively as a
Sailor, the King, and an Angel. It is suggested that he may also set and
remove all of the properties.

In the final scene a palm tree (the coat-stand) appears, bearing
coconuts with zippers and a copy of the Tarshish Gazette. Then the tree
disappears, and Jonah complains. The Angel helps Jonah find the lesson:
as the tree is to him, so much more may that city be to God.

Then Jonah raises the question: God must have known how all would
turn out. The Angel agrees.

JONAH. Then what does he want of my life? What's the point of
this expensive business with whales and palm trees and so on?

The Angel, however, cannot answer this question, and instead complains of
the vicissitudes of his own job. "It should happen to a dog."27 It is
left to Jonah to draw the conclusion: "We are the dogs of God." (p. 56)
Such lines appear to make the point that God's ways are ultimately
unfathomable, but that humankind from its finite position should not fret
about that fact. Mankowitz's own comments would appear to support this

view.

 

27 Sheffer suggests that this exchange between Jonah and the Angel
is in the manner of a vaudeville routine. Sheffer, p. xi.

135
As to the message of the stor --"Why should I not spare Nin-
eveh?" This is, one h0pes, hgg God feels about Man--unlike Man who
is less tolerant of himself.

Neither the mystery nor the mercy of God's ways, nevertheless, seems
the "point" of this play so much as does the farcical victimizing and
justifying of the prophet as shlemiel. Just before the curtain falls
Jonah asks the Angel for a lift home, and they agree to stop in at

Tarshish on the way:

ANGEL. . . . Did you hear that young Fyvel opened a cafe espresso
bar on the High Street?

JONAH. I read it in the paper. He's a clever boy.

 

28 Mankowitz, p. 46.

CHAPTER SIX

Adaptive Treatments of Jonah

Certain playwrights have employed the figure of Jonah in the context
of developing their own particular theses or perspectives on human
nature, society, political cirCumstances, or whatever situation happens
to be of personal interest. The plot of the book of Jonah may or may not
be followed. In any case, the Biblical source serves as a vehicle for
the expression of ideas not necessarily related to the intent of that
source. Whereas both the interpretive and the didactic treatments have as
a premise what the playwrights at least take to be a possible legitimate
"meaning" of the story as originally written, the writers in the present
category find Jonah simply familiar enough to be useful in the presen-
tation of the chosen themes. The primary "content" or dramatic focus is
derived from sources other than the Biblical work itself. As Sister Mary
Jeremy Finnegan, referring to the two “masques” of Robert Frost, states
simply and well: ". . . although the characters are Biblical, they are
living outside of Biblical times."1 Or as Clarence K. Sandelin says of
the writings of Robert Nathan: "Nathan's fantasy at its best is a dis-
placement by which he makes Biblical myth and metaphor serve his interest
in contemporary secular life."2 Furthermore, unlike the didactic drama-

tizations this group of plays tends to avoid moralizing at least at

 

, 1 Sister Mary Jeremy Finnegan, "Frost's Masque of Mercy," catholic
world 186 (February, 1958), p. 358.

2 Sandelin, p. 149. On this and the following page Sandelin dis-
cusses this "displacement" in Nathan's novel Jonah.

136

137
the more obvious levels. Like the comic treatments, the six plays in the
present group cover a relatively short span of time, all having been
written during a period from the 1940s through the 19605.

The earliest work in English of this type might be considered Robert
Frost's A Masque of'Mercy, written in 1947.3 A dramatic poem in one act,
A Masque of Mercy was like A Masque of Reason, derived from the book of
Job two years earlier, not intended for stage performance. The play
does, nevertheless, illustrate well both the importance of non-Biblical
sources for the dramatist's treatment of the subject and the function of
the dramatist's own personal qUestions or vision in determining the
theme. As “masques” the two Frost dramas do not call for the spectacle
associated with the court entertainments of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and
for the most part Restoration times. Rather they recall the debate
between characters which represent certain philosophic points of view in
a work such as John Milton's comus. Frost's plays have been claimed to

draw upon . the Platonic dialogue, the Puritan allegory, and the
closet drama . . .," "Horatian conversation," and "a Scholastic philos-

ophy."4

 

3 Robert Frost, A Masque of Mercy, in Complete Poems of Robert Frost
(New York: Henry Holt, 1930-1949), pp. 609-642. While Guenter Rutenborn's
The Sign of‘Jonah was produced in Germany in 1946, the first performance
in English translation was not until 1957. The George White adaptation,
the version of the play to be considered here, was produced three years
later.

4 Respectively, Lawrence McMillan, "A Modern Allegory," Hudson
Review 1 (1948), p. 105; Reuben A. Brower, The Poetry of Robert Frost:
Constellations of'Intention (New York: Oxford University, 1963), p. 208;
William G. O' Donnell, "Parable in Poetry," Virginia Quarterly Review 25: 2
(Spring, 1949), p. 296. W. R. Irwin also cites the Platonic dialogue,

though there is no Socrates- -figure . . . no genuine dialectic, and
no Platonic myth. " Irwin, "The Unity of Frost's Masques," American
Literature 32: 3 (November, 1960), p. 304.

138

A Masque of'Mercy is set in a bookstore managed by My Brother's
Keeper, addreSsed normally as Keeper, and his wife Jesse Bel (the Bib-
lical Jezebel). With them is Jesse Bel's sometime psychiatrist Paul.
Just at closing time there enters the fourth character, Jonas Dove--
bearing the name literally, that is, ”Jonah Jonah" or "Dove Dove"--who is
a fugitive from God.5 The city upon which Jonah has been called to
pronounce doom, seen here as in many of the other Jonah dramas as repre-
senting civilization more generally, is identified as New York. Jonah is
fleeing because he ". . . can't trust God to be unmerciful" and make good
his threats--the complaint, indeed, of the Biblical Jonah at the conclu-
sion of the Nineveh adventure (p. 614). Jonah is very much the legalist,
insisting on immediate retribution by God commensurate with humankind's
viciousness:

I don't see how it can be to His interest

This modern tendency I find in Him

To take the punishment out of all failure

To be strong, careful, thrifty, diligent,

Anything we once thought we had to be. (p. 624)
Paul points out that Jonah's attitude, however, has led him to greater
interest in the doom itself than in its causes (p. 621).

If Frost's Jonah retains recognizable connections with his Biblical
counterpart, the remaining three characters provide "answers" to Jonah
which clearly reflect the poet's own assessment of contemporary culture.

Keeper reveals a succession of philosdphic stances, all within a gen-

erally "liberal" frame of reference. He is, somewhat superficially, a

 

5 The fugitive theme is emphasized early in the play throuthonah's
reference to Francis Thompson's poem "The Hound of Heaven" (p. 610),
while Paul comments on the matter in calling attention to the repetition
in the character's name: "Ah, Jonah, Jonah--twice—-reproachfully."

(p. 612) Reginald Cook gives interesting brief descriptions of the four
characters in his Robert Frost: A Living voice (Amherst, MA: University
of Massachusetts, 1974), p. 191.

139
Marxist. He is a poet and hence "a star-crossed lover." (p. 629) He is
a secularized Christian, appropriating Christian doctrine when it is
useful and prepared-to "simply turn away from" it when it is not (PP.
632-633). He is tolerant of all points of view: "Live and let live,
believe and let believe." (p. 636) He confesses to a caution in his
commitments and convictions which he believes allows them to remain
intact as he asserts that if
. . . you see too bright a gate

. . . you will come to with a foolish feeling.

When a great tide of argument sweeps in

My small fresh water spring gets drowned of course.

But when the brine goes back as go it must

I can count on my source to spring again ‘

Not even brackish from its salt experience. (p. 633)
But in the final speech of the play, referring to Jonah and to himself,
Keeper realizes:

We both have lacked the courage in the heart

To overcome the fear within the soul

And go ahead to any accomplishment. (p. 642)

While not agreeing on the poet's intended implications, many critics

appear to find in these three lines--with their crucial categories of

"fear, courage,’ and "accomplishment"--the essence of Frost's concern
in A Masque of Mercy.

Jesse Bel drinks a good deal, and has been seeking unsuccessfully
the reality and the meaning of love. She recognizes that the problem
" . may be lack of faith . . .," but is nevertheless ". . . only
languidly/Inclined to hope for much." (p. 635) Paul is the New Testament
missionary and letter-writer ". . . who theologized/Christ almost.out of
Christianity." (p. 615) He is an advocate of ''mercy" both as a practical
matter of attempting to remedy social and economic injustice, wherein the
Christian's goal is close to that of Keeper the revolutionist, and as

that divine forgiveness necessary to redeem the individual when

140

Our lives laid down in war and peace. may not
Be found acceptable in Heaven's sight.
And that they may be is the only prayer
Worth praying. (p. 642)
Paul holds a distinctly Niebuhrian view of the Sermon on the Mount as
intended to convict us of our inadequacy rather than to furnish a real-
izable model for living. A
KEEPER An irresistable impossibility.
A lofty beauty no one can live up to
Yet no one turn from trying to live up to.

PAUL Yes, spoken so we can't live up to it
Yet so we'll have to weep because we can't. (PP. 631-632)6

A Masque of'Mercy is replete with satiric or ironic thrusts at, for
example, the institutional church as a substitute for reading the Bible

(p. 610), a religious superficiality which moves easily from polytheism

 

6 Compare the passage cited with such statements by Rienhold Niebuhr
as:

Jesus admits that the ultimate possibility of human life is beyond

the capacity of sinful man . . . Man as sinner is not unmindful of

the ultimate requirements of his nature as free spirit. He knows

that any particular historical concretion of law is not enough

. . . and . . . he is not ready to meet these requirements once they

are defined.

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of'Man: A Christian Interpre—
tation: vol. 1, Human Nature (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941),
p. 288.

Again, A Masque of Marcy's theme of uncertainty and despair attending all
human efforts, as expressed later in the same speech by Paul--

Here we all fail together, dwarfed and poor.
Failure is failure, but success is failure.

--may be compared with Niebuhr's "The freedom of the self is such that no
rule of justice, no particular method of arbitrating the interests of the
other with those of the self, can leave the self with the feeling that it
has done all that it could." Niebuhr, p. 295. Frost's view of the
impossibility of perfect justice is resonant generally with Niebuhr's
insistence, as revealed in a variety of the theologian's writings, on the
relativity of the Biblical ethic. For Frost the inevitable injustice can
be redeemed only by "mercy"--whether or not such mercy is indeed a
reality. Similarly, for Niebuhr the contradiction between the demand of
justice and fallible human nature can be resolved only by "love." Niebuhr,
Ibid.

141

through trinitarianism and unitarianism to deism (pp. 614-615), and a
kind of "fire insurance" as ". . . the discovery that loss from failure/
By being spread out over everybody/Can be made negligible." (p. 624) At
times Frost's dialogue is simply punning, as when Keeper defines "analyst"
as one "Who keeps our bookstore annals" (p. 616), or when he asks Jonah:
"Have you any grounds,/Or undergrounds, for confidence in earthquake?"
(p. 619) The incidental barbs and puns, however, do not utimately cloak
the poet's serious philosophical purpose. Whereas the earlier A Masque
of Reason explored the enigmatic nature of justice, A Masque of Mercy
goes on to treat the "mercy—justice contradiction." (p. 615)7 Jonah
finally is convinced by Paul's assurance of the availability of mercy,
and accepts the invitation to undergo a purgation in the bookstore cel-
lar. Before he can descend, however, the cellar door is slammed in
Jonah's face.8 Jonah fades from the others' hearing and, presumably,

dies because in throwing himself upon the divine mercy he has altogether

 

7 See especially the exchange between Jonah and Paul, p. 626.
William G. O'Donnell argues that Frost's two masques are quite dissimilar.
O'Donnell, p. 270. Other critics have perceived an integral thematic and
structural relationship. See in particular Irwin, pp. 302-312, and
Brower, pp. 220-221. This unity is also suggested by Finnegan, pp. 357-
361. John R. Doyle, Jr., proposes that the two plays are not "con-
secutive" but nevertheless "complementary." "Some Attitudes and Ideas of
Robert Frost," English Studies in Africa 1 (September, 1958), p. 183.
This article is essentially reproduced in Doyle's The Poetry of Robert
Frost: An Analysis (New York: Hafner, 1962), with A Masque of Reason and
A Masque of Mercy discussed on pp. 241-250.

8 Frost sent to Louis Untermeyer three versions (two in 1921 and one
in 1942) of a poem on descending a stairway into a dark cellar, wearing
monk's habit; and, in the final version, ending ". . . spread out in the
figure of a cross.” Frost's accompanying comments make clear that he is
thinking both of his end as a poet and of his death. The Letters of
Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1963), pp. 130-131, 136, 331. Anna K. Juhnke cites
the third "cellar" poem as demonstrating Frost's identification with his
character Jonah, although what is at stake in her view is not conven-
tional "salvation" but rather "selfsalvation" in which the poet is con-
cerned with ". . . keeping what he is . . ." Juhnke, "Religion in Robert
Frost's Poetry: The Play for Self-Possession," American Literature 36:2
(May, 1964), p. 163.

142

given up his own substance, which is his "sense of justice." (p. 639)
The final note struck, in concluding speeches respectively by Keeper and

Paul, is that there must be mercy if there is anything because we can
never be convinced that we have acted justly. But critics have been

unable to agree upon Frost's own attitude with respect to his play's
dénouement. A

Frost's own point of view has been identified variously as that of
Keeper, Jonas, and Paul.9 Frost has been regarded as castigating science
and technology, and as questioning the possibility of revolutionary or
legislative social reform.10 Rationality and irrationality have been

held to constitute the poet's paramount concern.11 The quality of

 

9 Finnegan believes Keeper may be Frost. Finnegan, p. 359. Cook
concurs, pp. 192-193. Doyle suggests that Jonas is, in part, Frost.
Doyle, p. 181. Peter J. Stanlis claims that ". . . Frost's own ideas

. . are about equally divided between Paul and Keeper . . ." Stanlis,
"Robert Frost's Masques and the Classic American Tradition," in Committee
on the Frost Centennial of the University of Southern Mississippi, comp.,
Frost: Centennial Essays (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi,
n.d.), p. 463.

10 Peter J. Stanlis declares that A Masque of Mercy reveals Frost's
suspicion of New Deal politics, that Keeper is ". . epitomized by
Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal administration sought to 'homogonize
mankind.'" Stanlis, "Robert Frost: Politics in Theory and Practice," in
Jac Tharpe, ed., Frost: Centennial Essays II (Jackson, MS: University
Press of Mississippi, 1976), p. 78. See also Stanlis' "Robert Frost's
Masques and the Classic American Tradition," in Frost: Centennial Essays,
pp. 461-463; and Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph,
1915-1938 (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1970).P PP 656-657, n. 14. Harold H. Watts denies that Frost is ever
either serious about or adept with social concerns. His essay concludes
with a discussion of the two "masques." Watts, "Robert Frost and the
Interrupted Dialogue," American Literature 27 (March, 1955), pp. 69- 87.
This essay is reprinted in James M[elville] Cox, ed. , Robert Frost: A
Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentice- Hall,

1962), pp. 105-122. John T. Hiers sheds helpful light on Frost's views
of science, technology, and the proletarian revolution, in his "Robert
Frost's Quarrel with Science and Technology," The Georgia Review 25
(Summer, 1971), pp. 182- 205.

11 Roberta F. Sarfatt Borkat maintains that both plays demonstrate
the inescapability of unreason, since mercy as opposed to justice can be
conceived in no other way, and that therefore for Frost the universe holds
no comfort. Borkat, "The Bleak Landscape of Robert Frost," The Midwest
Quarterly 16 (1975), pp. 453-467. IrWin argues that A Masque of Reason's

143

human courage is held by many commentators to be Frost's emphasis, with
accomplishment alternatively considered of equal or of little impor-

tance.12 The divine mercy, again depending on the particular interpre-

ter's view, may or may not exist as a palliative for one's lack of
accomplishment or a justification of one's courage.13 Thus the degree to

which Frost shares a Biblical or Christian perSpective, and the meaning

of his Jonah's demise, remain open critical questions.14

 

Job and A masque of'Mercy's Jonah are embarked on the same quest " . . . to
find, if possible, in God a conformity with human reason." Irwin con-
cludes that Mercy, answering the question raised in Reason, demonstrates
that such conformity is not to be perceived; but he feels that for Frost
this discovery need not be cause for despair. Irwin, p. 309.

12 Doyle insists that "courage and accomplishment" are equally
Frost's emphases. Doyle, p. 182. Marion Montgomery, on the other hand,
feels that for Frost courage alone is of significance, regardless of any
"accomplishment." Montgomery, "Robert Frost and His Use of Barriers: Man
vs. Nature Toward God," South Atlantic Quarterly 57 (Summer, 1958), p.
352. Montgomery's essay is reprinted in Cox, pp. 138-150. Stanlis cites
courage but feels that what is at stake is not ". . . the pagan virtue,
physical courage [but] the Christian virtue, spiritual fear . . . " which
is to be understood as the realization that we may never be able to
measure up to expectations. Stanlis, "Robert Frost's Masques and the
classic American Tradition," p. 465. Cook views A Masque of'Mercy as
emphatically humanistic, and believes the emphasis to be on the courage
to act. Cook, pp. 193-194. Watts' essay will be found helpful generally
concerning Frost's view of the person of action.

13 Montgomery believes that Frost wrote neither "masque" with
cynicism, and that he intended both to uphold human courage and to
justify the ways of God. Montgomery, pp. 343-347, 352-353. McMillan
finds A Masque of'Mercy upholding a New Testament concept of mercy.
McMillan, p. 107. And Stanlis states:

It advocates living the trial by existence with daring and faith, on
the highest level of which man is capable, and in the assurance that
when this is done the rest belongs to heaven.

Stanlis, "Robert Frost's Masques and the Classic American Tradition," in
Frost: Centennial Essays, p. 465. O'Donnell feels that the play is
intended to illuminate ". . . a mercy from God, not from man . . ." and
to suggest that such a mercy is available. O'Donnell, p. 279. Other
commentators, as has been suggested above (nn. 10, 11) find courage--with
or without accomplishment--to be its own sole justification.

14 According to Irwin A Masque of'Mercy ends in ". . . an unorthodox
synthesis in which peace and truth reside in a faith which is beyond the

144

Without attempting to resolve the several dilemmas which have
attended the dramatic poem's reception, enough has no doubt been said to
indicate that Robert Frost's own philosophic concerns significantly
inform his treatment of the Jonah theme. William G. O'Donnell perhaps
summarizes as well as can be done the poet's overriding preoccupation:
"In Frost's poetry the radical isolation of the individual has always
been taken as a basic experience, something that everyone must face in
one form or another."15

A similar claim might be made for Robert Nathan, author of the 1952

two-act drama Jezebel's Husband.16 As Sandelin suggests: "The sense of

 

purview of reason." Irwin, p. 304. O'Donnell feels that Frost's ideas

in this play ". . . are Christian in a traditional sense." O'Donnell,

p. 271. Stanlis characterizes both "masques" in terms of a "religious
orthodoxy." Stanlis, "Robert Frost's Masques and the Classic American
Tradition," p. 465. O'Donnell perceives a synthesis between Keeper and
Paul, with Keeper at least considering the validity of Christian belief.
O'Donnell, p. 280. Dorothy Judd Hall discusses Frost's own "Old Testament
Christianity" in relation to A Masque of'Mercy. "An Old Testament
Christian," in Jac Tharpe, ed., Frost: Centennial Essays.III (Jackson,

MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1976). PP. 321-325. See also
Lawrance Thompson and R. H. Winnick, Robert Frost: The Later Years, 1938-
1963 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976). PP. 130-141. Irwin
finds in Jonah's death a "purgatorial surrender" in which it is the old
being which dies. Irwin, p. 310. O'Donnell agrees that Jonah ". . . must
die to self . . . " O'Donnell, p. 274. See also Cook, p. 192, and
especially O'Donnell, p. 278. Anna K. Juhnke disputes the presence of a
divine "saving" of Jonah, arguing that Keeper and Paul abandon any notion
of help beyond themselves in favor of the truth that one must save oneself--
( though Frost delivers this message with certain ambiguity. Juhnke, pp. 161-
163. For Borkat, Jonah dies short of attaining his goal, but having
achieved a kind of victory in learning ". . . the truth about justice and
mercy." Borkat, p. 456. Brower declares that Jonah at the end of the
play acquires the courage to accept not salvation but failure. Brower,
pp. 222-224. George W. Nitchie understands that Jonah's death is to be
viewed as an affirmation, but argues that Frost himself is ambiguous as

to whether this constitutes salvation in a doctrinal sense or defeat.
Nitchie, Human Values in the Poetry of'Robert Frost (Durham, NC: Duke
University, 1960), pp. 169, 176-183.

15 O'Donnell, p. 277. O'Donnell suggests that this motif, sounded
unambiguously in A Masque of'Mercy, can be read from the play back into
Frost's earlier poetry.

15 Robert Nathan, Jezebel's Husband in volume with The Sleeping
Beauty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953). Jezebel's Husband received its
premier production in the summer of 1952.

145

alienation is common in twentieth-century literature, yet the very fre-
quency with which Nathan treats this topic identifies it as his private
burden.“17 Like Frost, Nathan in his drama employs humor in the service
of his serious intent. Indeed, as Sandelin points out: "Nathan elects to
treat [the] human condition as comic, and the crisis and resolution of
his play approach farce." This critic goes so far as to identify Jeze-
bel's Husband as ". . . a situation comedy based on that old battle of
the sexes also treated, but seldom with more humor, by James Thurber."18
Jezebel's Husband might in fact be compared more closely to James Bridie's
Jonah and the Whale than to Frost's A Masque of'Mercy. Nathan's humor
tends to the ironic and occasionally the satiric. In Nathan's play, as
in Bridie's, considerable sympathy is elicited for Jonah with his human
feelings and disappointments. Nathan's tone, however, is less brittle
than is Bridie's, his mood more marked by pathos and pain. Bridie has
perceived the comedy inherent in the Biblical story and has embellished
it with his comments on contemporary civilization. Nathan, rather,
begins with his assumptions about human nature and exiStence, adapting
the Biblical character to his point of view. Nathan brings to his
treatment of the human condition his typically compassionate humor, but

the admixture of pathos is stronger than in Bridie.19

 

17 Sandelin, p. 129. A further comparison with Frost is perhaps
invited by Sandelin's characterization of Nathan as opposed to the
". . urban, industrial, commercial and hedonistic forces at work in
modern society." Sandelin, p. 131.

18 Ibid, pp. 88, 157.

19 Robert Tapley in his essay "Robert Nathan: Poet and Ironist"
discusses the mingling of humor and tenderness in Nathan's writings.
Tapley, "Robert Nathan: Poet and Ironist," The Bookman (October, 1932),
pp. 607-614. See also Edith McEwen Dorian's summary comment in "While a
Little Dog Dances--Robert Nathan: Novelist of Simplicity," The Sewanee
Review (Spring, 1933), p. 140. Sandelin in a discussion of Nathan's

146

Jezebel's Husband deals with a Jonah in his fifties, at a time con—
siderably after his Ninevite adventure. The social ambitions of his wife
Jezebel have led Jonah to accept a comfortable life in their palace,
where he devotes much of his time to domestic horticulture and no longer
hears the voice of God. He appears content to’rest on the success of his
earlier patriotic prophecies under King Jeroboam II,20 the fame derived
from the sojourn in the whale and the miraculous wholesale conversion of
the Ninevites, and his subsequent low-profile acquiescence in current
political policies. The sophistication of the court enters Jonah's home
in the persons of the King's chief councillor and two female retainers.
Their commission to secure from Jonah a "prophecy" concerning Israel's
continued prosperity, at a time when the Assyrian threat is troubling the
populace, is supported by Jezebel at the promise of land and a royal
title. Jonah's childhood sweetheart Judith--now widowed and the mother
of five children--appears, troubling Jonah with thoughts of his early
prophetic idealism. But he learns the difficulty of returning to the
innocence of youth, in no small part because of his real attachment to
the honors which can be bestowed upon the politically-attuned as opposed
to the "true" prophet.21 The prophet Micah, here a young man again

reminding Jonah of his own early days in the profession, comes with his

 

novels comments that ". . . folly and fraud seem to be tolerated by the
patience of his sad exposition, and half-excused by his painful laugh-
ter." 'Sandelin, p. 50.

20 Nathan utilizes the tradition that this Jonah is the same prophet
who, as recorded in 11 Kings 14:25, counselled Jeroboam in his war with
Syria.

21 Nostalgia for a lost youth is with Nathan a recurring theme. See
The Sleeping Beauty, pp. 158, 184, 198, 203, where--as for Jonah in
Jezebel's Husband-~the month of April symbolizes this time of relative
innocence and simplicity and the blossoming of adolescent love.

147
fiery denunciation of the Israelites and seeking access to the King.
When Micah begins to harangue the local citizens with their coming pun-
ishment at the hands of the Assyrians, Jonah stops him with a party-line
speech promising peace and security. Since he no longer receives mes-
sages from God, Jonah can serve only to prevent a fruitless stirring up
of the people.

The Assyrians do invade the country, and prove rather more civilized
than pictured by the Israelites. Tiglath Pileser himself attempts to
persuade Jonah to become his court prophet. Beginning to return to his
former self, Jonah declines, pointing out that Jezebel has for years
suggested the nature of his prophetic utterances. The Assyrian king then
offers the position to Jezebel, and as they prepare to leave, it is
becoming clear that Jezebel will dominate Tiglath Pileser as she has
Jonah. Jonah rescues Micah from despair, advising him to remain with his
own people with a message of future comfort and reconciliation to God.22
At this point Jonah realizes that he is once again hearing the voice of
God. He resolves to return to his true prophetic calling, promising

Judith that they will be able to see each other on . week ends and
holidays." (p. 112)

The story of Jonah clearly held Nathan's fascination for a consid-
erable period of time. His drama of 1952 is to a large extent a sequel
to his 1925 novel Jonah, treating the prophet's youth and concluding with

the Ninevite mission. Characters and thematic interests of the novel

recur in the play.23 In the novel Jonah appears as a popular young

 

22 Nathan thus makes Jonah responsible for the famous peace passage
of Michah 4:3-4.

23 A number of details are also carried from the novel into the
play. The official substitution of an eagle feather for Jonah's less

148

prophet advocating, unlike such gloomy forecasters as Amos and Hosea,
wars which prove both relatively easy and profitable. That early repu-
tation and its cause are alluded to in the play. In Jezebel's Husband
Jonah explains to Micah that he ran away from God when called to preach
in Nineveh largely because God had allowed him to lose his girl. In
Jonah that incident is depicted; and Jonah is seen subsequently, full of
fire and determination, accepting the call in order to impress Judith who
will doubtless hear of his fearless exploit. In the drama the Israelites,
particularly Councillor Azariah, epitomize a blindly nationalistic van-
ity. Similarly in the novel chauvinism and the notion of the "holy war"
are satirized. The universalist theme which many scholars find in the
Biblical book of Jonah is emphasized in Nathan's novel. Here religious
parochialism is satirized on two levels: just as the Israelites tend to
think that Yahweh is exclusively their God, so Jonah feels Yahweh should
be in a special way his personal deity and arrange affairs so that Judith
could be his. By the time of the play Jonah himself has learned the
lesson (specifically during his three days inside the whale) and is able
to perceive the Israelite view as myopic.24
It is perhaps easier to categorize Nathan's Jezebel's Husband as a
modernized or adaptive treatment of Jonah than to identify specifically

the author's particular "theme" or "point." Although ironic and satiric

 

impressive-looking angel's feather occurs in both works. In both works
Judith sings the "Sharon Song" (Jonah, p. 46; Jezebel's Husband, p. 53).
A song delivered by Jonah's mother in the novel (pp. 144, 146) is sung by
Jonah in the play (p. 53). Other details are changed somewhat, as in
Judith's uncle Prince Ahab in the novel becoming her father in the play.

24 Nathan's own disdain for viewing God through restrictive sec-
tarian lenses is expressed in his "On Being a Jew," Scribner's Magazine
93:6 (June, 1933), p. 372.

149
barbs are to be found in the play, Nathan's primary interest appears to
be not in society so much as in the individual human being caught between
the desire for purity of motive on the one hand and the reality of worldly
success on the other. Critics find that Nathan's protagonists tend to be
unable to resolve life's quandaries, and that the reader or audience is
left with questions. Sandelin, for instance, regards Jonah, Jezebel, and
Judith as the significant characters in the drama, and suggests that
" . these three define the basic situation of all mankind in their
efforts to acquire spiritual grace, mundane power, or mortal love without
understanding in the least the cost and complications that might be
involved." Sandelin goes on to claim that ". . . the play presents
typically inept human beings floundering bravely or brashly in the
familiar toils of human experience; our real pleasure comes from recog-
nizing the small aspirations and follies which are the dimensions of
ordinary life."25 In addition, critics tend to discuss Nathan's thematic
interests in terms of his works as a whole, finding a variety of preoccu-
pations and insights emerging in full focus or to a slight degree de-
pending upon the particular piece of writing. One suggestion regarding
Jezebel's Husband, for example, is that the play is one of many works in
which love between man and woman is seen to be at the same time wondrous
and disappointing, with neither party ever able to change the other to
suit his or her expectations.26

Sandelin's comment on a later Nathan play, Juliet in Mantua, may

perhaps be taken as a reasonable characterization of other works, including

 

25 Sandelin, pp. 88, 89.
25 Ibid.. pp. 135-136.

150
Jezebel 's Husband:
. the unheroic nature of its characters, and the sadly comic
situation in which man forever blunders through the mystery of his
existence . . . suggest the courage, patience, and wisdom of the
dyseg3Christian heritage--happily illuminated by candid Jewish
Richard McBride's From Cut the Whale's Mouth was produced non-
professionally in San Francisco in 1961.28 The play is written in free
verse, and employs a chorus, appearing first as the sailors and subse-
quently as the Ninevites, as well as a Scene Setter who narrates the
opening of each scene. The drama seems rather static, partly because
major events are only described by the narrator, but more particularly
because of the author's greater interest in exploring ideas and lyrical
language than in exploring character and its motivation.

The play begins with Jonah at Joppa seeking passage to Tarshish.
For no stated reason, Jonah is simply fleeing from God. He muses on the
mystery of the universe, raising contemporary philosophic questions about
the existence, the interest in human affairs, and the comprehensibility
of a deity. The chorus of seamen engages with several characters,
including the ship's Captain and Jonah, in poetic warnings about the sea
with a hint of a man being swallowed by a fish. After the Scene Setter
describes the storm, the seamen expound further on this theme and end in
a bloodthirsty cry for a sacrifice to propitiate the gods. The Voice of
God calls to them the name "Jonah," and they decide to ask that traveller
the meaning of these occurrences. Jonah again engages in a poetic flight

for a time, and then suggests that he be thrown overboard. The Captain

is reluctant, but Jonah insists.

 

27 Ibid., p. 90.
28 Richard McBride, From Out the Whale's mouth (n.d., typescript).

151

In the interior of the whale Jonah complains that he has been too
pious a practicing Jew to have to suffer such vicissitudes as are his.
The Spirit of Festive Nineveh suggests as a compelling reason for Jonah's
not preaching to the Ninevites that they don't want him.

The reformers never know

How the sinners feel.

That's why, so often, they fail. (p. 37)
Indeed, Jonah asks himself, why should he wish to spoil anyone's fun?
The Spirit of the Sacrificed Jonah offers Jonah a justification of his
situation reminiscent of God's answer to Job. Having earlier alluded to
"my ancestor Job,” Jonah now hears from his Spirit

. . that it is unthinkable

To think about the unknown.

It's been here all the time.

Before anything we know or dream

It began forming on itself. (p. 41)
This Spirit proposes that Jonah should not question God's command, but
simply do what he is told. Jonah's being, according to this spirit, will

reside in his doing.

Let God make an individual of you,
Instead of dying a nonentity. (p. 41)

The Spirit of the Captain accuses Jonah, because he fled God, of having
placed the Captain in a position of cowardice. Finally the Voice of God
reissues the call to preach at Nineveh. Jonah decides that the mission
must be undertaken, even though he cannot understand its purpose.

As Jonah preaches, the crowd mocks him. Together Jonah and his
Ninevite chorus raise, without resolving, questions about the meaning of
truth and the nature of God. Jonah recites a brief history of humankind,
beginning in the Garden of Eden--where McBride typically but erroneously
perceives sexuality to have been the sin of Adam and Eve. Here, as else-

where in the play, the author appears to explore an idea with serious

152
intent, only to call into question whether that idea is being entertained
at all seriously, with such lines as:

And children came so fast then:

Bastards damned from birth,

For there were no churches

To join this first bed-bound pair. (Act 11, p. 54)29
Jonah concludes his sermon by informing the people that their destruction
is inevitable, but then, paradoxically, instructing them in what they
must do to be saved.

As the Ninevites come to Jonah and his Assistant to be outfitted in
sackcloth, the audience learns the self-serving nature of their motives.
The King sees the new regimen and his new image as a source of power.

His megalomaniac outburst suggests an Orwellian 1984 society, with
planned warfare to keep the citizenry blindly obedient, flavored with the
tortures of the Inquisition. The Politico seeks to be where the action
is, on the side of the majority. The Woman, representing the poor,

and rather confused about the proceedings, asks:

Is this religion different

From my--hope-—

My breakfast tomorrow? (p. 76)

Jonah and the Assistant find dealing with the Common Woman distasteful.
The Assistant cries:

We measure them now

For sackclothes

And religion:

And what next?

Will we measure them for chains?

And will they thank us for that, too?
0 Life! (pp. 82-83)

 

29 The second act ends with pages numbered 54 through 62; the third
act opens with this pagination repeated. References to these pages will,
therefore, be identified by act as well as page number.

153
A bit later, in the Epilog, Jonah reflects on the religious reformation
he has wrought as more or less in the "opiate of the people" class:
1 Their thanksgivings

Ring in my ears,

And they'll remember me only

Till another magician comes along, wand-waving . . . (p. 84)

In the Epilog Jonah finds that the entire affair is still without
meaning as far as he is concerned. He recalls what the Ninevites either
selfishly or mindlessly made of his pronouncements. He doubts the vera-
city of what the Spirits told him in calling him forth from the whale.
He concludes that he would have been better off remaining in the whale,
where he might have been rewarded by fame and a better chance, as a
martyr, of knowing God. Like all men, he feels, he only lacked the
courage to choose that better way.

Some of the verse of From Out the Whale's Mouth seems weak or
hurried. Jonah, for example, speaks of being ". . . swallowed/By this
gluttenous grabber . . ." (p. 35) Later he complains ponderously:

" . . Now tears are forming in that region/Behind my eyes." (p. 39)
And the Spirit of the Captain refers to that moment ". . . When you were

sacrificed/To calm the qualm . . . (p. 42) 0f questionable effective-
ness as an image, again, is Jonah's

As the windings of the whale's intestines

Are many,

So are the misfortunes

That fall on my poor head. (p. 34)

Nevertheless, a dominant motif does emerge, by way of variations on
a permanence-impermanence theme. The portion of Jonah's sermon devoted
to the history of the human race depicts a tumultuous succession of
finite beings, institutions, events, and emotions. There follows sud-

denly a castigation of the Ninevites for their sins. The impression is,

154

however, that the insane "history" somehow justifies the Ninevite apothe-
osis of pleasure. Jonah's Assistant suggests that a people's fear is
inevitably of disorder and change. Jonah points out that human beings,
however, insist upon change as an antedote to boredom. And he goes on to
predict for Nineveh a truly major transformation, into ". . . A complete
new world . . ." (Act III, p. 56) The prophet is proved incorrect. He
observes: "The King seems a new person." (p. 63) But the King soon
reveals that he has abandoned none of his worldly interests and ambi-
tions. The Politico confides that ". . . each movement/Changes my
appearance . . ." (p. 66) Again, the change is superficial, or illusory,
and a matter of calculated policy. Finally, the poor perforce welcome
change. The Woman says:

I do not know whom to thank,

And I do not know what

To be thankful for.

But that there is

Some great change

I feel sure. Yes

Things hurry along

50 quickly now

That the dark god-cloud

Seems less angry today

Than yesterday.

Life in Nineveh

Seems different already,

And there will be a time later

To see if

The change is

Good or bad. (pp. 77-78)
Yet, as Jonah observes in the Epilog, nothing at all in Nineveh or any-
where has changed. Looked at broadly, existence is a mad rush of trans-
formations, births and deaths. Juxtaposed with this vision is the
narrower perspective revealing that neither human nature nor human condi-
tions really change at all. McBride characteristically makes no attempt

to resolve the paradox.

155

In his Jonah, produced off-Broadway during the 1965-1966 season, T.
J. Spencer likewise employs the Biblical narrative as a vehicle for the
exploration of contemporary ideas and shibboleths.30 Spencer, however--
like Wolf Mankowitz--makes more direct use of anachronisms than does
McBride. At Joppa, for example, the peddler Ezra speaks of "franchise,"
"consignment," and "a dormant market opportunity here." (I-1-4)31 The
ship's Captain concludes at one point that the rumors of a city's pending
destruction were started by real estate brokers.

. . . They've done that kind of thing before. They panic people

into selling their property at a low price and then pay through

the nose to get it back when the panic's over. (I-2-5)
Upon learning that Jonah is a prophet, the ship's Captain--whom Spencer
makes a Hebrew--refers to him as "Reverend." After much haggling, Jonah
finally manages to gain passage by signing on board as an assistant
chaplain. Shortly before the presumed destruction of their city, the
Ninevites decide to end the monarchy and become a republic, in 9rder to
demonstrate some sense of freedom and independent thought in the face of
dire threats. As already implied in these instances, Spencer supplies
his play with humorous incident more directly and regularly than does
McBride. The business between the Captain and Bos'n over drawing funds
for the crew is close to farce.

BOS'N: Sir: request permission to draw petty cash from ship's

company funds.
CAPTAIN: What for?
BOS'N: So the men can get a drink, sir. They've never sailed

before without being paid first.
CAPTAIN: Of course, good idea, Bos'n.

 

30 T. J, Spencer, Jonah (New York: Dramatists Play SGVVICE’ 1966’
typescript).

31 As Spencer repaginates each scene, page references will be given
as found in the script.

156
BOS'N (Writes on a piece of paper and hands it to the Captain):
There you are, Captain: requisition.
CAPTAIN (Signs the paper and hands it back to Bos'n): All right,
Bos'n. (Writes on another piece of paper and hands it to
Bos'n, too) There's the purchase order.

BOS'N (Signs the paper and hands it back to Captain): There you

are, sir.

CAPTAIN: Thank you, Bos'n (Hands him a purse) There's the

money . . . (I-1-14)
Later, at sea, Jonah proposes that God really can't afford to take time
off from Israel to bother with Nineveh, and rationalizes that:

. I am serving God best by sailing to Tharsis and preparing

my arguments to change his mind. There isn't much point to his

having a stafj’down here, after all, if he's not going to follow

its recomendations. (I-2-13)

Spencer's Jonah, like McBride's From Out the Whale's Mouth, begins
at the seaport of Joppa, here with much bustling activity and a variety
of incidental characters. In general Jonah moves well, revealing a keen
sense of action on the part of the playwright. The major characters who
appear at various stages in the course of the drama represent opposing
points of view, philosophies of life, courses of action. First, the
Captain espouses what he refers to several times as "faith in reason and
order." By this he means essentially that things ought to be done as
they have always been done, as evidenced comically in his reluctance to
approve new--even if more efficient--methods of loading his ship's cargo.

Jonah first appears as simply an Old Man, who angrily seizes and
throws into the sea pagan idols being peddled by Ezra. Jonah, Ezra,
and the Port Agent are all trying to get on board the Captain's ship, the
latter two because they have heard that God has sent someone to destroy a
city and assume that the city in jeopardy is Joppa. Jonah finally
reveals his identity as a prophet, though without yet identifying himself
as the God-appointed messenger in question. Jonah is pictured as not

only a loyal Israelite but one who fancies that he knows better than God

157

himself the course of action the Almighty should pursue. In addition to
prophesying Jeroboam's successful war he had in fact badgered the king
into the affair, resorting finally to stirring up the people to demand
war. Jonah claims that he is fleeing precisely in order to ensure the
destruction of Nineveh. He suspects that God nay be becoming more
catholic in his tastes and that he might be in danger of repenting his
decision and wasting his love on the Ninevites. ". . . A new image--or
else a new policy. In either case he's wrong." (I-2-12)32 Later, at
Nineveh, Jonah changes his mind and believes that the city will be des-
troyed after.all, even though he has now preached repentance. "Oh, I'm
sure of it now. I had a sign . . . A good extermination of the heathen
is just what the world needs. I can hardly wait!" (II-2-4) The sign to
which he refers is the withering of the vine, which Jonah takes as a
foreshadowing of the desolation of Nineveh.33

Ezra, who gets on board by taking the position of First Mate, func-
tions not so much to provide a distinct alternative philosophy as to
serve generally as the pagan foil for Jonah's Hebrew parochialism. Ezra
does, however, speak of his Philistine father whom he remembers as an
advocate of achieving world peace through the institution of large-scale

international credit.

 

32 Jonah does mention, more traditionally, his reluctance to be
proven ". . . the prophet of a do-nothing God." (I-2-12) Spencer also
suggests the New Testament identification of Jesus with Jonah in spec-
ifying that Jonah is from Galilee, where "a common saying" is: "He who
lives by the sword will perish by the sword." (1-1-20)

33 To achieve this irony, Spencer has reversed the order of the
withering of Jonah's plant and the discovery that Nineveh is not to be
laid waste. Then, as comic comment on Jonah's anger at the sparing of
the Ninevites, the playwright subsequently has the prophet's hut suddenly
collapse.

158

Once it is revealed that Jonah is himself that much-discussed har-
binger of doom, the Captain, assuming the threatened city now to be
Tharsis, resolves to turn back. As an alternative, it is suggested that
Jonah be thrown overboard. The Captain, faced with such desperate
measures to fend off the divine wrath, begins to wonder whether God
really is as he had imagined the symbol for reason and order. The storm
gathers. It is Zorgo, the non-English-speaking heathen chaplain, to whom
the message comes that there is a sinner on board. And it is Zorgo who
proposes (through his interpreter, the Bos'n) that lots be cast to iden-
tify the culprit. Jonah accepts his fate. And the second scene of Act
One ends with Zorgo's startling line, suddenly in English (i.e., Hebrew):
"The Lord is merciful; praise the name of the Lord!" (I-2-21)

In the fish Jonah finds two fellow prisoner-travellers. One is
Ulysses, the other an incoherent, violent madman whom Ulysses has named
Thersites. Ulysses is much more content than is Jonah to accept his
circumstances and to deal constructively with the situation within the
limits imposed by reality.

You will forgive me if I do not agree that I am here either

because of my own sin or for your salvation. The only fact is

that I am here. What I make of that is important, not what I

think it means. (II-1-8)

Ulysses and Jonah engage in a debate over whether man creates himself as
Ulysses believes, or owes his origin to and derives his purpose from a
higher power, as Jonah views the matter. Although Ulysses clearly main-
tains the position of a kind of existentialist positivist, he does sub-
stitute the poet for either God or fate as the being responsible for
one's situation. Jonah's actions further reveal his nationalist superi-
ority complex. He argues that Thersites should be summarily judged as

unworthy and executed for the sake of his safety. Then a "righteous

159

slaughter" motif is sounded as Jonah, deciding to resume his holy mis-
sion, is willing that the other two be abandoned to die in the fish
which he has caused to go into convulsions in order that he be spewed
forth.

The final scene (Act Two, Scene Two) takes place at Nineveh after
Jonah's proclamation has been made. The Captain and other members of
the ship's crew have arrived to deliver the prophecy, belatedly, and
incidentally to sell a large quantity of sackcloth. They are accompanied
by the convert Zorgo, who has determined to carry out the task left
unfinished by Jonah. Ulysses enters, intent upon convincing the Ninevites
to cease listening to prophecies and behaving in a servile manner.
Thersites, no longer mad, has also been saved, and turns out to be
Ezra's long-lost father, Zachary the businessman. Four major positions
are now represented. Jonah insists that the Ninevites must repent, even
though they are to be destroyed. Zorgo is convinced that if the people
repent they will be saved. Ulysses advocates defying God and turning to
more productive pursuits than prayer and penance. Zachary, still believing
that ". . . they will have made the first step toward a great new world
order," wants the Ninevites to pay up their old promissory notes which
he holds. All but Zorgo are disappointed at the outcome. Zorgo, the
one-time heathen, resolves now ". . . to bring the word of the God of
Mercy to all peoples, everywhere." (II-2-16)

Spencer's Jonah thus ends on the universalist note which has been
found to be common to many of the dramatic treatments of the Biblical
story. Even Jonah finally learns the lesson, though his last speech
expresses dubiety:

You raised me up as your prophet: a special man, leading a spe-

cial people. And behind my back you give it out that one man is

just like another in your sight. All right; so be it. It's a
good idea. But who's going to believe it? (II-2-27)

160
The 1965-1966 off-Broadway season saw productions of two Jonah

plays. In addition to Spencer's was that by Paul Goodman, originally
written in 1941 and revised for production at The American Place The-
atre.34 Goodman's treatment is to a large extent comic. "Among the
books of the Bible, Jonah is unique as the only comedy . . .," according
to the playwright.35 The 1941 version of the play carried the subtitle A
Biblical Comedy with Jewish Jokes Culled Far and Wide. Indeed, Goodman's
play may be compared with Wolf Mankowitz's It Should Happen to a Dog.
Yiddish expressions are employed, and Jewish jokes told. The humor at
the beginning of both plays is similar, with Jonah complaining to himself
about the petty annoyances of everyday life. Mankowitz's title appears
as a line early in Goodman's play: "It should happen to a dog to be a
prophet of the Lord of Hosts . . ." (p. 134) In Mankowitz's play Jonah's
plant bears a zippered coconut, in Goodman's a watermelon with spigot and
glasses. And Goodman's Jonah appears equally to fit the definition of
the shlemiel. Like Mankowitz's protagonist, Goodman's Jonah makes all
the wrong choices; yet the Angel is able to say of him: "I love this old
mixture of humility and a little absolute skepticism." (p. 140) Among
the more farcical elements of Goodman's play are Jonah's violent struggle
in Act One to keep the Angel out of his house, and the stage effects for
Act Two which begins with the ship already at sea and the storm in full

force. The storm, however, is only around the ship itself, and this is

 

34 Paul Goodman, Jonah, in Three Plays, pp. 131-198. The earlier
version appeared in The Facts of'Life (New York: Vanguard, 1945), pp.
201-261. Scene Two of Act Five of the 1965 version does not appear in
the original. Otherwise, aside from cuts in certain speeches, the
changes are essentially in words and phrases. Occasionally speeches in
the 1941 version are of help in clarifying Goodman's thought, and these
passages will be cited where appropriate.

35 Goodman, Three Plays, p. 199.

161
depicted by ". . . a tilting cartoon front that the actors play behind."

(p. 146)

Goodman's purpose, nevertheless, does not appear primarily comic.
Discussing his play The Young Disciple, Goodman comments: "My purpose is
not to teach, nor move, certainly not to please, but to shake your
assurance. This is the High Boring Style."36 If this observation char-
acterizes Goodman's attitude in Jonah as well, the frequent breaks in
dramatic action and desultory introduction of ideas may be deliberate.
But the result is confusing, as the reaction of critics attests.37
Confusing, seemingly gratuitous and unconnected, for example, is the
brief shipboard discussion of death and evil, which Jonah suddenly
interrupts to tell a joke.

Especially curious are the frequent New Testament or Christian
references. On three occasions Jonah calls out "in the name of the
Father and Son." (pp. 156, 169, 193) The pagan sea captain employs "The
Mother and the Son" in a curse, while the Ninevite King calls upon "the
name of the Mother and the Baby" in prayer. (pp. 148, 188) The Angel
calls forth the plant "in the name of the Holy Ghost . . ." (p. 194)

Such language has been prepared for in part, perhaps, in an exchange in

Act One between the Angel and Jonah.

 

36 Paul Goodman, Five Years: Thoughts During a USeless Time (New
York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1966). p. 24.

37 Martin Gottfried's observation on the production can serve as an
example of this reaction.

Jonah was impossible . . . It was . . . shabbily constructed,
hooking music and dance into a script that provided no hooks . . .
The entire business was effete, amateurish as only the far left can
be, and terrible (to give you an example of pure leftism, Goodman
insisted on amateurism as an aesthetic).

A Theater Divided: The Postwar American Stage (Boston and Toronto:
Little, Brown, 1967, 1969), pp. 73-74.

162

ANGEL: . . . There will one day be good news (He whispers in
Jonah's ear. They talk unintelligible words)

JONAH (Passionately): When? If not now, when?

ANGEL: All in good time. (p. 138)

But Goodman neither makes a point of the anachronism nor clarifies an
attitude toward the Christian view of the messiah.

Goodman appears equally interested in and favorably disposed toward
Jonah and the Ninevites. And he is disinclined to show dissatisfaction
with God's attitude or procedures. Thus, while an examination of the
text does reveal some definition of the respective positions represented
by these figures, there is no real conflict between opposing points of
view.

In his preface to the 1941 version of Jonah Goodman discusses his
dramatic method and Biblical interpretation.

The difficulty in the BOOK OF JONAH is the motivation for

Jonah's flight: the reason given in IV,2 must of course be accepted:

"Was not this my saying?"--that Nineveh would be spared--"therefore

I fled." But what on earth does it mean? Are we to take it as

simple pique at having been made a fool of? This would hardly be a

Jonah for the canon! Perhaps, more deeply, Jonah disapproves of

God's repenting? But why then does he flee rather than criti-

cize?--Indeed, many interpretations are given by the theologians to

explain the passage; and what I have tried to do, as usual, is to
incorporate as many of them as possible into a system, using
especially contrary motives, gg charity and aggression, as a means
of psychological exploration.

One notes here particularly the intent to systematize varied interpre-

tations and "contrary motives,‘ which nay help account for the play's
anbiguities. Goodman's dramatic perspective is different for Jonah, the
Ninevites and God. If the exploration of Jonah is "psychological," that

of the Ninevites is not. The Ninevites are treated sociologically, with

 

33 Paul Goodman, The Facts of’Life, p. 203. This preface is ap-
pended in a condensed form to the 1965 version as "Comment on Jonah," in
Three Plays, pp. 199-200.

163
no apparent concern for individual character motivation. The Angel of
God, at the same time, represents a transcendent view not fully open to
human understanding.

Jonah is clearly intended to stand out as a character from other
figures on the stage, as indicated in Goodman's instruction: "Assign the
actors double or triple roles as much as possible, to create the effect
of a few character-types and JONAH." (p. 132, N.B.) In his "Comment on
Jonah" the author explains the purpose of this device. "For indeed Jonah
meets the same people in every situation, on the ship, in the whale, and
in Nineveh."39 Jonah's responses to his situations are as varied as the
situations themselves. The sixty-five year—old prophet complains to the
Angel that he will be the loser whether or not Nineveh is destroyed,
since in the one case he will be regarded as a destroyer and in the other
as a fool and a liar. He cherishes a phil050phy of non-commitment which
normally saves him from this kind of circumstance.

Because I have no confidence that what I say will come to good--

because I know, in fact, that the reverse is true--I have perfected

a thousand ways of keeping quiet. I can show that.nany more things

have to be taken into consideration. When I am hard pressed--

because people really need to know--I often lapse into silent
sympathy . . . At least, when I don't commit myself to it, they
can't say that the inevitable calamity has been my doing. (PP.

138-139)

The corollary to Jonah's position of non-commitment is his belief
that prophesying should be avoided unless a clearly constructive result
is likely. True, Jonah initially objects simply to the fact that all his
prophecies are required to be full of doom.

. did you once give me some good news to cry out? Not me,

especially, why should I be honored? but was there once some good
news? . . . I'm not thinking of anything splendid, but just for

 

39 Goodman, Three Plays, p. 200.

164

once an encouraging word-—for instance, that the war won't break
out, or that a politician will do a sensible thing, or maybe that
Jessie will have twins and there won't be a plague. (p. 137)

But later the prophet insists on the utility of delivered prophecy.

If I believed in the destruction of Nineveh, that great city,
wouldn't I hurry to the ends of the earth--and in the right direc-
tion--to cry it out? But where is any difference between that
Nineveh yesterday and tomorrow? They've been going at it at the
same clip for years--I know the whole story; does he think I lived
in Gath-Hepher all my life, just because I talk with a provincial
accent? Take it from me, prophecy won't do any good. The fact is
that such threats, especially when they turn out fatally, are just

what they thrive on. I'm a plain man, and to tell the truth, I

never make a prediction unless I see a use for it. Some allowance

has to be made for unexpected bad luck. (pp. 142-143)

In the fish Jonah has what are presumably two visions of the world
and himself. As a tailor he is commissioned to make a pair of trousers
for the Angel. When the Angel complains about the two weeks' wait, after
God had after all made the entire earth in half that time, Jonah suggests
that the Angel compare the quality of the two products. Jonah next
appears as a young boy about to undergo surgery which seems simulta-
neously to be a trial.

This is really a remarkable case; did you ever before see a lad

with too much savvy to act out what he himself believes in--because

he has a keen suspicion as to what that's worth . . . Therefore, he
acts on the negative principle of not allowing himself to be

pushed. (p. 160)

Later the Angel chides: “. . . you intellectuals, who try to persuade
other people, you first have to persuade yourselves." (p. 165)

Jonah's prayer from the belly of the fish is similar in spirit and
imagery to the Biblical psalm, except for the note of sarcasm which
Goodman injects: "It was you who cast me there and said Swim! Swim!

My hands were tied behind my back: You said Swim! swim!" (p. 162) His
outcry leads to the reappearance of the Angel, with whom Jonah carries on
a subtle debate concerning the appropriateness of his running away and

against whom Jonah holds his own rather well.

165

In Nineveh Jonah is easily accepted by the people. He is flattered
by the citizens turning his forecast of destruction into a popular song.
When he finds the King despondent, with the presumed end of Nineveh near,
Jonah attempts to cheer him up with a joke. When it is seen that the
destruction has not occurred the people rejoiCe, some praising and some
taunting the prophet. The mortified Jonah cries out the traditional plea
that God take his life, and later indicates his displeasure at the loss
of his plant. The Angel puts to him the customary "Doest thou well to be
angry . . . ?" and briefly delivers the usual moral--with, however, a
subtly comic emphasis on the Ninevites' inability to ". . . discern
between their right hand and their left." Jonah finally conveys through
a smile that he has seen the point, and the Angel adds a final inter-
jection: "Nebich?" (PP. 197, 198) The word nebich, according to Rosten,
has typically a range of meanings.40 Goodman, who employs the term
throughout the play, has earlier defined his use of it in Jonah's explan-
ation to the Captain: ,

. . it means that this big deal that you have is as nothing

compared with a little secret that I know; so really there is no

need for me to feel the burning resentment that I do feel; and

anyway, I have my own ideas about the value of that little secret,

such as it is. (p. 152)
So the joke is, in a sense, on the Ninevites. And Jonah is priviledged
to share in appreciation of the irony of the human condition.

The King, the one citizen who is said to think too much, after
having imported for his people everything of possible excitement which

foreign cultures have to offer, now fears that there remains nothing new

of interest. Upon Jonah's arrival, it occurs to him that "Doom!" may be

 

40 Rosten, pp. 260-262.

166
the needed novelty. Furthermore, he reflects, the prOphecy could be
true. He therefore resolves upon a course of corporate repentance, using
essentially the Biblical proclamation, and appoints Jonah chairman of a
committee to attend to arrangements.

Later, on his knees praying, the King confesses that he is really
not at all sure why Nineveh should be destroyed. In dialogue with the
Angel he asks what God can possibly accomplish through such a measure, as
opposed to allowing human beings to understand their sins and work the
matter out on their own. The Angel gives only the cryptic answer: "You
really don't have an inkling of what it means to be damned, do you?" And
the last word is the King's: "No--frankly--I don't." (p. 190)

In his preface to the 1941 version of Jonah Goodman identifies
himself as ". . . one of the playful Ninevites . . ."41 In his "Comment"
on the 1965 version, speaking of this ". . . guileless and rather child-
like society . . .," he claims: "The mores of Nineveh I have simply
borrowed from the principle of Mandeville's Fable of'the Bees: Private
Vices are Public Benefits."42 Indeed, in Act one the Angel in describing

Nineveh echoes Bernard Mandeville's subtitle: . the Ninevites are
honest enough to admit the relation between their private vices and their
public benefits." (p. 141)

Mandeville's . central thesis concerning the social and eco-
nomic utility of men's moral imperfections"43 no doubt provides the key

to Goodman's puzzling simultaneous condemnation and approval of the

 

41 Goodman, The Facts of'Lijo, p. 204.

42 Goodman, Three Plays, p. 200. The comment appears in different
form in the 1941 preface, The Facts of'Life, p. 204.

43 Richard I. Cook, Bernard Mandeville, Sylvia E. Bowman, ed.,
TWayne's English Authors Series, no. 170 (New York: Twayne, 1974), p. 128.

167

Ninevite culture. In Mandeville's argument ". . . vice is the foundation
of national prosperity and happiness."44 Thus while individual human
self-serving may be considered "wrong," its contribution to a more enjoy-
able corporate life may be regarded as a benefit. "Since you will be
wicked in any case . . . whether your country is prosperous or not, you
imight as well be wicked and prosperous." Nevertheless, this view is to
be maintained ". . . always with the proviso that all this happiness is
wicked; that, if it were only possible, it would be better to abandon
it."45 Mandeville's position is more solidly justified, according to
Richard I. Cook, in his perception that our "morals" are essentially
hypocritical and our "virtues" maintained largely as a matter of social
convention.46

Goodman's Ninevites have dispensed with social convention. The
King, in the 1941 Jonah, explains the idea of individual freedom as
public policy:

. the idea was to substitute interior imperialism for the
exterior imperialism. Interior imperialism within the soul of each
man. I mean, the idea was to go to the extremes in the soul and
exploit them--the extremes of unbridled feelings and instincts and
any notion that happened to pop in to your minds . . .for my own
territory I reserved the exploitation of the extreme of moderation.
(p. 243) 7

The policy leads to what the King understands to be a reasonable manner

of dealing with the world which God has created. He complains to the

Angel:

 

44 F. B. Kaye, Introduction to Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the
Bees: 0r, Private Vices, Public Benefits (London: Oxford University,
1924), vol. 1, p. xlvii.

45 Ibid., pp. 1-1i.
46 Cook, Bernard Mandeville, pp. 117—123.

47 The speech in the 1965 version lacks this explication. See
Goodman, Three Plays, p. 174.

 

168

. if I could see what it is that.my peOple are to repent of
. . . do you think we would not accept t e consequences? What kind
of people do you think we are? . . . Is it our little experiments,
always within the possibilities of the natural world, that the
Creator of the natural world has found to condemn? (pp. 189-190)

For Goodman, then, the Ninevite society is close to his vision of the
ideal. He in fact declares that the Empire City, as Nineveh is called in
his play, ". . . might be, all things considered, the beSt option for our
own Empire City."48

Finally, as the third party in the dialogue, God accepts the Nine-
vite solution to the problem of how to live well while insisting that
because of human finitude that solution cannot be considered the last
word. Responding to the King's query, quoted above, as to how God could
condemn his people who merely deal honestly with existence as given them.

the Angel in the 1941 version states:

This reasoning is not satisfactory. You make a false abstraction
from the people committing these acts--which is the real topic-—and
argue about the actions themselves, which are what they are.

. . But you yourself have said that in these little experiments,
as you call them, you have come to a pause.

It is not your wisdom that will save you tonight, but the fact that
such a perfect fool cannot but be innocent at heart. . . . You

 

48 Goodman, Three Plays, p. 200. For a discussion of the good and
humanly fulfilling society see Paul and Percival Goodman, Communitas:
Means of'Livelihood and Ways of’Life (New York: Random House, Vintage
Books, 1947, 1960); especially the "Conclusion," pp. 218-224, in which
the Goodmans emphasize cultural openness, equality of the availability of
experience, and human as opposed to social engineering values. In
Growing up Absurd (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1956, 1960)
Paul Goodman explains what he sees to be wrong with our present techno-
logical and depersonalized society. See also his preface to The Society
I Live in Is Mine (New York: Horizon, 1962), pp. vii-x; Like a Conquered
Province: The Moral Ambiguity of'America (New York: Random House, 1966,
1967); Uto ian Essays and Practical Solutions (New York: Random House,
1950, etc. ; New Reformation: Notes of'a Neolithic Conservative (New
York: Random House, 1970); and the "decentralist" argument of People or
Personnel: Decentraliging and the Mixed System (New York: Random House,
1963, 1964, 1965). The Empire City, a kind of novel—cum-social-commentary
published prior to the earlier version of Jonah, suggests both Goodman's
criti ue of society and Mandeville's social theory. Goodman, The Empire
City New York: Macmillan, 1942, 1946, 1959).

 

169

have not come to even an inkling of what it means to be damned.
(pp. 254-255)49

Guenter Rutenborn's title, The Sign of Jonah, alerts the playgoer to
the fact that Jesus' reference to Jonah in the New Testament is at least
as important to the dramatic action of the play as is the Old Testament
book of Jonah.50 Rutenborn in fact quotes Luke 11:29-32 as a headnote to
the script. White quotes the passage from the Revised Standard Version:

. . . he began to say, "This generation is an evil generation; it
seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of
Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will
the Son of man be to this generation. The queen of the South will
arise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn
them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The
men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and
condemn it; for they repented at the preachin of Jonah, and be-
hold, something greater than Jonah is here." p. 5)51

 

49 Compare the 1965 version in which Goodman gives the final word
not to the Angel but to the King: "No--frankly--I don't." (p. 180)

50 Guenter Rutenborn, The Sign of'Jonah: A Play in Nine Scenes,
trans. George White (New York: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1960). This
second English version of Rutenborn's drama, to be considered in the
present study, is really an adaptation for the off-Broadway stage. The
earlier translation by Bernhard Ohse and Gerhard Elston, withdrawn from
circulation upon publication of the White version and presently unavail-
able from any source, followed more closely the German original. Tom F.
Driver, who finds the White much the inferior work, compares the two
versions in "Metaphor into Simile," The Christian Century 77:43 (October
26, 1960), PP. 1250-1251. Das Zeichen des Jana was first produced in
East Germany by a church group in 1947, and then played between 500 and
1,000 performances professionally in West Berlin and on tour. The Ohse
and Elston English version was given three performances at Union Theo-
logical Seminary in New York in May of 1957, and subsequently was pro-
duced by American church groups. The White version opened on September
8, 1960, at the Players' Theatre in New York, for 53 performances. "The
Sentencing of God," Time 69:19 (May 13, 1957), P. 72; Bauland, pp. 212-
213. While historians of the modern German theater by and large ignore
Rutenborn, Bauland places the pastor-dramatist in impressive company:
"Among the most promising [of new German-language dramatists] are: Karl
Wittlinger, Herman Gressieker, Guenter Rutenborn, Rolf Hochhuth, and
Peter Weiss." Bauland, p. 210.

51 See also Matthew 12:39-42 and 16:4.

170

The Stage Manager calls attention to the fact that the author has
"inserted a motto at the head of this script" as a sign for the people of
the twentieth century (p. 85).52 The time is the period immediately fol-
lowing the Second World War, although the dramatic occasion is the final
judgment referred to in the Luke passage. While the play's characters
allude to incidents of the book of Jonah, that book does not provide the
plot. Rutenborn employs other Old and New Testament sources as well.
The actress who plays the Ninevite Queen also appears as the Queen of the
South (or Sheba) whose visit to King Solomon is recorded in I Kings 10:1-
13. And her initial entrance, in costume suggested by the description in
Revelation 17:4, is as the Queen of Babylon. Another important source is
the narration in Daniel 3 of the casting of Shadrach, Meshack, and
Abednego into the furnace of fire.53

Tom F. Driver characterizes Rutenborn's one-act, nine-scene drama as

 

52 Rutenborn sees the sign of Jonah, employed by Jesus, as

. of a double kind. Just as His utterances were directed to the
heathen, so His gospel, too, should be preached to the heathen after
His own people have rejected it. Jonah's confinement in the fish
becomes a prophetic prototype of Him who on the third day rose from
the dead.

Because Jonah preached to a great city, it seemed obvious to
quote him when I made the decision to preach to a metropolitan city
(by request) through the medium of the theater.

Guenter Rutenborn, "The Book of Jonah," in The Word Was God: Book by Book
through the Book of’Books, trans. Elmer E. Foelber (New York, Edinburgh,
Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1959), p. 148.

53 An interesting comparison can be made to Olov Hartman's use of
Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, the Queen of Babylon, and the fiery
furnace-~again intended to have contemporary application--in his litur-
gical drama The Fiery Furnace, in Three Church Dramas, trans. Brita
Stendahl (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 143-145. Hartman's litur-
gical Prophet and carpenter will be treated in the next chapter.

171

. . . in part a well managed allegory and in part an intriguing
piece of symbolism. I mean allegory both in its broad sense of
"speaking about one thing while supposedly speaking about another,"
and in the narrower sense of a work that has characters who repre-
sent abstractions. The Man in the Street, the Woman in the Street
and the Queen of the South are straight allegorical figures. They
represent all citizens and their governors at the court of last
judgment. The other figures--Jonah, the Judge, the archangels--are
not sustained allegorical figures in that sense. They are symbolic
figures, and like many good symbols each of them represents more
than one thing at a given moment and at different times.5

While Driver's differentiation of the allegorical from the symbolic
is helpful, the characters of the play are not neatly separated into two
types. All, for example, at one time or other reveal themselves as
German citizens recently under the Nazi regime. A more apt character-
ization of Rutenborn's approach both to history and to dramatic character
and incident might be as parable, rather than as allegory, symbol, or
analogy. William Stringfellow in his essay ”Do We Need a New Barmen
Declaration?" well expresses Rutenborn's method, though making no ref-
erence to Rutenborn or The Sign of’Jonah. Stringfellow is addressing
what he feels to be a tendency toward overly facile comparisons between
the Germany of 1934 and the United States of 1973:

I do not imply that there are no appr0priate comparisons to be
ventured or no significant similarities to be noticed. But I find
that history "repeats" itself as parable, rather than analogue, and
that the edifying similarities are topical rather than eventful,
having to do with perennial issues embodied in changing circum-
stances from time to time instead of with any factual duplication
transposed from one time to another.

Topical similarities are precisely those revealed by the characters

of The Sign of’Jonah as they step in and out of various Biblical roles,

become themselves using their real names, become ex-Nazis or ex-victims

 

54 Driver, "Metaphor into Simile," p. 1250.

55 William Stringfellow, "Do We Need a New Barmen Declaration?,"
Post American 3:3 (April, 1974), p. 12.

172

of the Nazi regime. Biblical incidents confront the actors with "peren-
nial issues" in such a way that they cannot bear to explore further the
meaning of events of their own time, and call for a different script to
play. If Rutenborn's drama has specific reference to post-war Germany,
his parabolic, dialectic method has provided relevance for performance in
later times and other countries. In his The word Was God Rutenborn makes
clear his understanding of the process:

As regularly happens in matters of faith, the Word of the Bible

becomes one's own affair. Surrealistic technigue permits this kind

of equating on the stage without further ado.5

The perception of the relevance of history, Biblical and secular, as
parabolic makes possible the considerable force of irony in The Sign of
Jonah. In the opening scene, endeavoring to convince Jonah to begin the
play despite Jonah's conviction that everyone in the audience will have
forgotten yesterday's atrocities, the Judge tells of his experience in a
train wreck.

We were able to remain calm . . . because we had been conditioned

by our experiences during the war. So you see, the memories have

remained alive. (p. 15)5
There is both theological and, in temporal terms, chronological irony in
the condemnation of God at the climax of the trial. Driver succinctly
summarizes this action:

The conclusion the investigation leads to over the protest of Jonah

is that none of those present is guilty . . . except God himself.

Once they think of it it seems obvious that God is guilty, for it

is he who has fashioned men and institutions as they are. The

witnesses therefore sentence God to suffer the punishments men

suffer: pain, humiliation, loneliness and death. The Judge and the
angels depart to deliver the sentence. In the silent interval

 

55 Rutenborn, The ward Was God, p. 148.

57 In Rutenborn's original, it should be noted, Jonah begins imme-
diately with his lengthy self-introduction to the audience. The prepar-
atory scene between Judge and Jonah has been added by White.

173

that follows . . . the audience becomes aware of one of the most

astounding of all ironies: that they who are guilty pass sentence

upon their Judge, but that the Judge, who is innocent, is willing

to accept the verdict and the sentence of the guilty. And one

ppigg more: he is not only willing to do this, he has already done

For Rutenborn history has a mid-point in the event of Christ, and
the time after that point is qualitatively different from the time
before. As in the passage quoted from Luke, ". . . something greater
than Jonah is here." Rutenborn's parabolic use of a variety of contem-
porary and Biblical moments and persons is informed by Jesus' prophetic
reference to Jonah and the Ninevites. The shifting back and forth between
the Biblical and the contemporary enhances the understanding of both,
without suggesting repetition. Time is not cyclical, with events repeating
themselves. But neither is time simply linear. The play has no division
into acts; does not observe the "unities" of time or place or even ac-
tion; in fact has no real plot but rather presents a succession of state-
ments, questions, challenges.59 Dramatic time, like historical time, is
dialectical, with each resolution or synthesis becoming a new thesis to
be questioned or attacked, a new crisis to be addressed. A variety of
tensions is maintained through the working of Rutenborn's dialectic: the
tension between ideas (who really is guilty?), between Biblical and
contemporary character, between actor and role, between stage and the

real world, between a realistic style and natural dialogue and a thea-

trical style and poetic dialogue.

 

58 Driver, "Metaphor into Simile," p. 1250.

59 Peter Bauland in The Hooded Eagle comments: "The play is . . an
analysis of a Biblical play by modern men rather than the play itself. "
Bauland, p. 212. This observation, however, fails to take account of the
dynamic tension which is created through the juxtaposition of Biblical
and‘modern.

174

The further tension between player and audience is created in part
through what is now the familiar device of characters emerging from the
audience to join those on stage. But Rutenborn creates ambiguities even
here. The first three witnesses--Man in the Street, Woman in the Street,
and Queen-—indeed step onto the stage from the auditorium, presumably
representing the men and women in the audience. But they are so costumed
that there is little question that they are "plants." Later, however,
the Merchant rushes forward to interrupt the proceedings. He is not
costumed theatrically, never assumes a role other than that of German
businessman Ernest Tiemann, and remains standing apart from the other
characters through the remainder of the performance. While the Mer-
chant's representation of the audience is more consistent, the charac-
ter's name nevertheless is not the same as the actor's name listed in the
program, and the theatrical is still in tension with the "realistic."

A tension within audience members themselves is created by Ruten-
born's theatrical realization of what Driver has termed the "dialectic of
justification by faith."60 Are we ourselves, finally, the judges or the
judged? Our guilt has been removed by the one we have accused, who has
already submitted to the sentence. But, paradoxically, since we do not
admit our guilt, that guilt cannot be removed. The dialectic is not
terminated as at the end of the play we are faced with two possibilities.
No doubt we are all at the same time both guilty and innocent. We can,
furthermore, become guilty or innocent. Perception of the perennial
issues presented in history and Scripture will be needed for the right

choice.

 

50 Lecture delivered at Union Theological Seminary in 1960.

 

175

 

A5 Previous critics have noted, Rutenborn's dialectical technique i,
owes a considerable debt to the theory and practice of Bertolt Brecht.61
Driver finds the Brecht-inspired dialectic peculiarly appropriate for a
distinctively Protestant drama, arguing that Rutenborn's theology dic-

tates his use of the dialectical approach.

 

51 Peter Bauland calls attention to Rutenborn' 5 place in the tra-
dition of expressionist theater generally, commenting in regard to con-
temporary German- -language drama that ". . in the main the manifesta-
tions of the technique are . . . restrained and selective, as in the work
of DUrrenmatt, Frisch, Rutenborn, Gresseiker, and Wittlinger." As
immediate sources for Rutenborn's dramatic method Bauland cites Brecht,
Luigi Pirandello, and Thornton Wilder. Bauland, pp. 94, 212. Driver
lists as major influences on Rutenborn Brecht, Pirandello, and George
Bernard Shaw. Driver, "Metaphor into Simile," p. 1250. Elsewhere Driver
argues, more specifically, that ". . . Pirandello looked upon truth and
illusion with the same bifocal vision with which Pastor Rutenborn looks
upon gull: and innocence." Then, turning to Brecht, Driver avers that
his use 0

. dialectic gives him a positive-negative attitude toward the
stage itself. The audience is constantly being swept away by the
action on the stage, then forcibly reminded of its presence in the
theatre. One' 5 total self and the self which would like to be "lost
in the play" are brought into dialogue.

Tom F[aw] Driver, "Thesis for a Playwright Still in Hidin ," in Finley
Eversole, ed., Christian Faith and the Contemporary Arts New York and
Nashville: Abingdon, 1957, 1958,1960, 1962), pp. 143-144. Driver's

essay appeared earlier in a somewhat expanded form in Motive 18: 7 (April,
1958), pp. 2-4. The discussion of The Sign of'Jonah is, however, unchanged
in the version published in the Eversole anthology.

A dialectical movement has been noted by one scholar in the book of Jonah
itself. "The thesis of Jeremiah and the antithesis of the prophet Jonah
are reconciled and surmounted in a so-to-say Hegelian synthesis by the
author of the book, who . . . wrote a parable for Jerusalem . . . to show
that God's mercy saves even the worst sinners." Bickerman, p. 44.

One other dramatist in the present group has been identified as employing
a dialectical approach. In his analysis of Robert Frost's A Masque of
Mercy, O'Donnell finds that: "The religious ideas in the poem [are]
expressed with a dialectical subtlety. . ." 0' Donnell' s essay is
largely an exploration of this dialectic, which he considers to end in a
synthesis of ideas. O'Donnell, pp. 269-282. In The Sign of'Jonah,
however, the dialectic serves more comprehensively as a dramatic tech-
nique, governing not only ideas but also events, the identity of char-
acters, and stagecraft.

176 A

Now the Protestant playwright . . ..must affirm the very tradition, A?
the very faith, the very law, over against which he would stand in
judgment . . . Even when he addresses an audience of churchgoers,
most often he confronts persons whose awareness of the great
Christian tradition is vague. He must therefore teach them the law
in the same breath that he proclaims to them freedom from the law.
He must make them religious and redeem them from religiosity in the
same/moment. In short, hg must speak with a Yes and a No. He must
. . . become dialectical. 2
In the carrying out of the play's dialectic Brechtian devices
abound. After his opening debate with the Judge Jonah, pretending to
become aware of the audience for the first time, addresses it directly.
Voices from the audience call out questions and complaints, interrupting
Jonah's narration. Raphael begins the proclamation of Judgment Day with
a recitation from Goethe's Faust, to be halted by Jonah who contemptu-
ously accuses him of classicism. When the actress playing the Queen
takes exception to being called by her own name when accused of attempted
murder, the Judge in a lesson on the nature of acting offers proof that
the one "behind all these masks" is necessarily culpable (pp. 38-40).
Rutenborn even at times makes fun of his own theatrical tradition and
stage devices, as when characters become confused over what is happening
or who they are, or when Jonah announces that the customary modern prac-
tice of employing slide projections, in this case to depict the cruci-
fixion, will not be followed in this production. Most significantly, the
pervasive Brechtian influence is in the presentation of historical events
for observation and comment, by audience as well as by acting company.
Within the dialectical frame, the actual succession of incidents in

the play is relatively simple. Rutenborn's Jonah is a former U-boat

captain who had been once trapped in his submerged submarine. Like his

............

 

52 Driver, "Thesis for a Playwright Still in Hiding," in Eversole,
pp. 143-144.

177
Biblical counterpart this Jonah at first declines to speak to the people.
His reason, however, is that he is certain they will refuse to be con-
verted, whereas the original Jonah was successful in converting an entire
city.

The Judge and the three archangels, all former German military
personnel, engage in mutual accusations. What is at stake is to be the
goal of the entire trial to follow: to establish the "initial precedent"
for atrocities committed through fiery furnaces, bombings, and denunci-.
ation of one's fellow citizens. Judgment Day is announced in a long
poem, delivered by the archangels, as an invitation to accept God's
mercy. With the addition of the three witnesses, the mutual recrimina-
tions continue. The Merchant asks how in the recent political and eco-
nomic circumstances an individual could have remained spotless and sur-
vive, arguing that he at least tried to stay honest and furthermore paid
the price of the loss of wife and children in a bombing raid. When the
initial precedent cannot be found among the common people, or in the
audience, the accusation is turned against the rulers. The Queen coun-
ters that she has no choice, given the nature of the human species, but
to govern through terror. Thus the ultimate culprit is determined
finally to be God, who must bear the responsibility for creating a uni-
verse in which mutual human respect and compassion and non-violence are
not possible. On behalf of God, the Judge reluctantly accepts the verdict.

Jonah then turns to the audience as those responsible for the
outcome of the trial.

What do you think you really have accomplished, people of the

twentieth century? Do you think you have done something particu-

larly bold, have node a new discovery? It is just a rediscovery!
. . good taste prevents us from showing you the actual execution

of the verdict. You know that it was carried out, and you know in
what fashion. We merely wish to remind you of it. (p. 83)

178

For the rest of the final scene the three witnesses remain in the
roles of citizens of Nineveh/Sheba. They quietly explain how they nan-
aged to change their course of action, through standing in "awe of God"
and refusing to bury the memories or disguise the evidence of their past
viciousness. The Merchant asks desperately What he is to do.

JONAH: Condemn yourself, then God will acquit you.

QUEEN: As the Judge condemned himself.
The Merchant suddenly realizes what he has done in joining in the con-
demnation of God. The other characters return to the stage, and the
Judge proclaims hopefully: "Then, after all, it was not in vain." (PP.
89-90) Whether he refers to the performance of the play, the crucifixion
of Christ, or the Second World War, is left ambiguous. Jonah sends the
members of the audience home with the admonition that the future will be

determined by their own actions.63

 

53 This final scene in particular may seem close to sheer didac-
ticism on the part of the playwright. Observation of several productions
of the play, however, has convinCed the preSent writer that sensitive
performance which avoids overplaying can keep the dialectic alive rather
than substituting homily. The single sentence accorded the drama in "The
Burns Mantle Yearbook" reads: “Guenter Rutenborn's Sign of Jonah gained
respect for its author, but was more treatise than drama.” Henry Hewes,
"Off Broadway," in The Best Plays of'1960-1961, ed. Louis Kronenberger
(New York and Toronto: Dodd, Mead, 1961), p. 44. It should be borne in
mind in this regard that the George White adaptation may be held accountable
for turning.much of Rutenborn's allusive "simile" into explicit "metaphor."
See Driver's interesting discussion of this point in "Simile into Metaphor,"
pp. 1250-1251.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Liturgical Treatment of Jonah

"Liturgical drama" is quite likely more often spoken of than clearly
realized in practice. If a dramatist's insistence that a play ought to
be performed in a chancel, rather than on a stage or in an open hall,
alone makes that play "liturgical,” then such drama hardly bears analysis
as a separate "type." Olov Hartman's dramatization of Jonah, however, is
not simply a play with Biblical subject matter that happens to have been
written for production in a sanctuary. Prophet and carpenter may indeed
serve as model for a kind of drama which takes seriously and employs
integrally as a forming principle the structure of the liturgy as de-
veloped within a particular ecclesiastical tradition.1

Like German Lutheran pastor Rutenborn in The Sign of'Jonah, Swedish
Lutheran Pastor Hartman in his Prophet and Carpenter refers directly to
the New Testament allusion to Jonah. Hartman's Act Three opens with the
line: "There shall no sign be given this generation but the sign of
Jonah," and the ensuing choral speech elaborates the theme (p. 20).
Furthermore, as in The Sign of’Jonah so in Prophet and carpenter the Luke
passage with its notion of the "sign" serves as a basic assumption for

the author's dramaturgy. Hartman himself acknowledges a debt to Brecht.2

 

1 Hartman, Prophet and Carpenter, in Three Church Dramas, pp. 1-13. The
play was written originally in Swedish in 1954. The English version was pro-
duced in 1965 by participants in the National Council of Churches Religious
Drama Workshop in Lake Forest, Illinois, staged by the play's original director,
Tuve Nystrom.

2 Ibid., Introduction, p. viii.

179

180

 

And, citing the symbolic function of Biblical figures in an essay entitled
"Symbolism in Church Art--Inhibition or Inspiration?," Hartman perceives a kind
of parabolic if not dialectical relation of Biblical to contemporary events:
In the New Testament we find a mass of names and events from the
Old Testament that serve as "types" of Christ and his reconcilia-
tion. The story of the prophet Jonah is thus "typical“ of the
death and resurrection of Christ . . . Anyone who has learned to
recognize this symbolism has been given access to a rich and
inexhaustible world of images. Some of these "types" have had
their content fixed once and for all; other appear in different
guises for different ages; others again are still waiting to be
discovered.
But that Hartman's dramatic interest differs ultimately from Rutenborn's
becomes clear a bit further in the essay when Hartman advises that
. . if this kaleidoscopic mass of symbols is really to serve the
Word, and not hinder it, it must become a part of the liturgy and
submit to its laws; that means it must facilitate, emphasize and
clarify the proclamation of the Word and the blessing of the sac-
raments. It must not draw attention to itself, but ead attention
to what is happening at the altar and in the pulpit.
If Rutenborn's drama is prophetic, in its use of history to illuminate
the sins of the contemporary moment, Hartman's drama is by contrast
sacramental, conceived like worship itself ". . . as proclamation and
intercession." Hartman speaks of re-establishing ". . . the relation
between cult and drama . . . ." As a liturgical dramatist he is con-
cerned with the play's relation to a particular church tradition, to its
architecture and its appointments and its ritual, and to the symbolic

values which they hold for the worshipping congregation.4

 

3 Olov Hartman, Earthly Things, trans. Eric J. Sharpe (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1968), p. 213.

4 Hartman, Three Church Dramas, Introduction, p. ix. Eric Sharpe
finds the roots of Swedish Evangelical Lutheran liturgical drama in
". . . the cultic drama of the Ancient Near East, with its patterns of
humiliation and coronation, death and resurrection.” Sharpe, "Litur-
gical Drama in Sweden," in Visible Proclamation: The Church and Drama,
ed. Rod French (Geneva, Switzerland: Youth Department, World Council of
Churches, 1963), pp. 23—29.

181
Regarding the particular space which both players and audience
occupy, Hartman maintains:

First of all, we must note that the Word itself is prolific of
symbols. . . . Should it be proclaimed in the open air, the points
of the compass become symbolic. The closed room, too, becomes a
part of the Word itself. The upper room, in which the Eucharist was
instituted while the night pressed, black and threatening, outside,
is transformed by what took place to an image of our Father's house,
of which Christ spoke.

The room in which the Word is proclaimed and the Eucharist
celebrated becomes a frontier, where earth and heaven meet in the
means of grace . . . It is inevitable that the entire room shall be
drawn into this symbolism.5

The symbolism of the night to which Hartman refers is carried directly
into Prophet and Carpenter. In the fi rst act ". . . altar and pulpit
hangings are in accordance with the church year." (p. 3)‘ For Act Two
these are exchanged for black hangings. The act takes place in the belly
of the fish, which is also the kingdom of death. The first act hangings
are restored for Act Three, to indicate Jonah's deliverance from the fish
as well as the promised deliverance through Christ from death.6 But

since this latter deliverance has not yet been fully realized, in the

 

5 Hartman, Earthly Things, pp. 211-212. See Sharpe's description of
the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran church interior, in "Liturgical Drama in
Sweden," pp. 25-26. .

5 The correspondence between the fish's belly and the kingdom of
death may be suggested by the psalm*which the Biblical author has as-
signed to Jonah as his prayer while within the monster. In discussing
Jonah's psalm, Leslie C. Allen remarks:

The theme of the descent to the underworld is a constant feature of
Hebrew psalmody to express the psalmist's brush with death encoun-
tered in one form or another . . . A straightforward reading of
chapter 2 indicates that the psalm was meant as praise for deli-
verance not from the fish but from drowning.

Allen, p. 184. Discussions of death, transformation, and resurrection as
symbolized in swallowing and disgorgement by the monster are cited in
chapter three, pp. 66-67, n. 8.

 

182

final act the night is still spoken of as the time of the prophesied
destruction of Nineveh, as well as hinted at as the time of Christ's
agony on Good Friday. I

The sanctuary itself, already in Hartman's view charged with the
symbolic, becomes during the course of the play a ship on the Mediter-
ranean, the kingdom of death/belly of the fish, and a mountain outside
Nineveh. Although the "performance" takes place mainly in the chancel,
the entire sanctuary is used consistently. At the beginning of Act One
the sailors enter from the rear, processing to the chancel with the
ship's mast "formed like a cross." (p. 3) At the same time the other
actors are seated in the pews, where they remain with the congregation
until it is time to take their places in the chancel. The Merchant
delivers his lines from his pew. Jonah, awakened from his sleep, is
brought forward by a sailor from the rear of the sanctuary.

The purpose of church drama, according to Hartman, is to engage all
participants ". . . in a dialog with God."7

The "footlights" across which this drama is played are at the altar;

on the far side there is the great darkness, out of which gaze eyes

that no one on this side has ever seen. The whole of the art of

worship is turned in this direction (that it faces east is a further

confirmatory act of symbolism).8
The altar then is for Hartman the critical point of focus, though in
another tradition a different liturgical symbol might take precedence.

"It is to be the altar or the communion table, i.e., the prevalent symbol

of God's presence in the midst of his congregation, which is to govern

 

7 Jaroslov Vajda, "The Church Rediscovers Drama: An Interview with
Olov Hartman," This Day (May, 1966), p. 17.

8 Hartman, Earthly Things, p. 189. Compare Soren Kierkegaard's
image of worship, with congregant as actor, speaker as prompter, and God
as audience and critic. Kierkegaard, Purity of’Heart Is to Will One
Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession, trans. Douglas
V. Steere (New York: Harper and Brothers, Harper Torchbook, 1938, 1948),
pp. 177-184.

 

183
the worship and the drama."9 At the conclusion of Prophet and Carpenter
all the players, with the congregants, turn to face the altar, as the
final choral lines are spoken, the Our Father is recited, the pastor
pronounces a benediction, and the last stanza of the hymn is sung.

The congregation sings stanzas of the hymn "'Welcome, Happy Morn-
ingI' Age to Age Shall Sing" at the beginning and end of Act One and at
the end of Acts Two and Three. With the refrain "Hell today is van-
quished" occurring on each occasion, the congregation thus voices the
continual hope for salvation maintained through the storm at sea, as
Jonah vanishes in "the mouth of the deep," during the "death" in the
fish, and after the dark night of Nineveh/Gethsemane.

The congregation is conceived as playing a critical role in the
drama.

. church drama presupposes the cooperation of a worshipping
congregation which is something quite other than a body of observers

who happen to be present in the pews of a church. The presence of a

worshi ping congregation is, indeed, a theological necessity

. Echurch drama's] distinctive aim is to proclaim God's word to

the congregasion and to express the congregation's intercessions

before God.
Theologically, Hartman focuses on the individual as in need of personal

forgiveness, but equally on the worshipping community of which the one

redeemed must necessarily be a part.11 The players in his drama are

 

9 Hartman, Three Church Dramas, Introduction, p. ix.
10 Ibid., p. viii.

11 See Eric Sharpe's Introduction to Earthly Things, pp. 9-13, for
an account of Hartman's early experience with the Salvation Army and its
individualist orientation, its emphasis on active involvement in the
world, and its identification with the social outcast, followed by his
joining the Lutheran Church of Sweden and the development of his concern
with the relationship between church and contemporary culture.

 

184
integrally a part of the congregation. And Jonah, as a character, finds
his place in community with the formerly despised Ninevites. Themati-
cally, Prophet and Carpenter ends on the note of a new universalist
understanding which many critics find to be the lesson of the Biblical
book of Jonah. Hartman's particular emphasis, however, is on the need
of all--the Ninevites, the dead, Jonah--for Christ.

Hartman avoids proliferation of non-liturgical properties or
secular costumes. The single mast of Act One is in Act Two laid on the
floor to represent a wreck. In Act Three the Carpenter is working on
the mast, both following his trade literally and symbolizing the Christ
preparing willingly for his sacrifice. Later the Carpenter carries the
mast like a cross on his back, to leave it standing in the nfidst of the
congregation. The costuming employs ecclesiastical garb, with symbolism
in color and occasional suggestion of distinctive character.

Jonah wears a purple robe made like an alb with a hood.

The captain wears an alb and cape.

The sailors wear surplices with appliquéd anchors.

Saul, David, and Jezebel wear gray robes.

Amos wears a gray alb and carries a shepherd's staff.

The carpenter wears an alb.

The Ninevites wear black albs.

The choir wears albs. (p. 2)

Ritual aspects of Prophet and Carpenter are enhanced by the use of a
chorus to which are assigned the formally poetic passages. Their
opening lines exemplify Hartman's remarkable imagery:

The sail was set in the evening

we sailed westward in the sun-street

but black grass grew between the rocks

over golden stones of that street fluttered

all thy swelling billows. (p. 3)

Hartman understands the chorus in particular as ". . . closely connected

with the worshipping congregation. In the liturgical tradition it

 

185
represents the congregation, and voices its intercession."12
In general, the major incidents of the Biblical account of Jonah as
well as Jonah's reactions to these events are all incorporated within
Hartman's drama. But all of the characters and events of the play are to
be perceived on more than one level. Hartman explains his method:

In this drama, Jonah, on one level, is a disobedient prophet,
numbered among the many pious individuals for whom a radical gospel
of God's grace is an unwelcome and incomprehensible part of the
Biblical tradition; the distinction between the saved and the damned
is for him one of the basic principles of existence. On this level
the carpenter is simply a carpenter in Nineveh who--like the captain
and the sailors--is bound to the rules of his vocation. The sea is
the sea, the ship is the ship, Nineveh is Nineveh.

On another level the events of this drama make transparent a
different pattern. The desperate atmosphere of Act TWO, for in-
stance, parallels the Old Testament's interpretation of the Kingdom
of Death. Jonah's visit, however, foreshadows the visit of a
greater prophet, descended into hell, on the third day to be raised
from the dead. At other points as well this perspective breaks into
the action, as when the tired prophet sleeps in the depths of the
ship, when he is cast into the sea, when like one resurrected he
appears in Nineveh and preaches repentance. Similarly, the car-
penter is an archetype for another carpenter in that he repairs what
has been broken and goes into the great city instead of away from
it. On this level the ship is not merely a ship and Nineveh is not
merely Nineveh. We all sail in this ship and we all live in that
city. 3

Certain lines of dialogue emphasize Jonah, often ironically, as the
type of Christ. On the ship he asks, "Why have you not forsaken me?"
(p. 8) Later, in the belly of the fish, Jonah exclaims, "My God, My God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" (p. 17) The Captain justifies the casting of
Jonah overboard with the words: "It is better that one man should die for
the people than that all perish." (p. 9) The Carpenter's identification
with Christ is made clear through his trade, his repairing and then

carrying the cross, his insistence that "I belong with them down there"

 

12 Hartman, Earthly Things, p. 196.

13 Hartman, Three Church Dramas, Introduction, pp. xvi-xvii.

 

186
as he joins the Ninevite sinners (p. 26). Salvation is the result of the
act of the Carpenter/Christ.14

In the belly of the fish Jonah meets "the gray crowd," the dead, all
of whom cry out about some personal need or loss. Jonah learns what
isolation, hell, and death his desired escape from God actually is. The
messianic passage from Isaiah 9:2, spoken by the chorus, relates this
kingdom of the dead to the situation of all who wait, and by implication
(since it is the passage read annually during the advent season) to the
situation of the contemporary living. At the end of the act the pounding
at the door followed by its opening to reveal the light represents
Christ's freeing of the dead from hell.

If Olov Hartman's drama is ritualistic, liturgical, sacramental, it
is so in order that the participant may be renewed for relating actively
to the secular world outside (or within) the church. His purpose in this
respect is not dissimilar from Rutenborn's, however markedly his dramatic
style and method differ from those of the German playwright. "The Gospel
has something to do with the things outside the church . . . What goes on
in the church is representative of what is going on in the world."15
Hartman's intent is ". . . to place the social reality of the world in the

context of the sacrament of the altar."16

 

14 For comparison with the New Testament passages see, respectively,
Matthew 27:46 and John 11:50. The Carpenter's identification with the
Ninevites relates to Jesus' assertion that " . . I have not come to
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" and his reputation as

. a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Luke 5:32, 7:34.

15 Vajda, "The Church Rediscovers Drama," p. 15.

15 Eric J. Sharpe, Introduction to Earthly Things, p. 11. See
Sharpe's "Liturgical Drama in Sweden," p. 24.

 

187
Both Rutenborn and Hartman create a dramatic form suited to the

intended audience and to the conditions of performance. For Rutenborn
these are the theater-going public, the "legitimate" stage, and theatrical
tradition and conventions; for Hartman, the worshipping congregation, the
church sanctuary, and liturgical tradition and conventions. Thus it is

in terms of the means to the desired end--in terms of the dramatic form--
that The Sign of Jonah and Prophet and Carpenter must finally be Classified

as such distinctively separate types of plays.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Summary and Conclusions

Poor Jonah! I wonder if he knows how pOpular he has become in the
twentieth century. May he R.I.P.

So comments Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell with reference to modern "Jonah"
drama.1 Jonah's twentieth-century popularity has not been restricted to
the drama but is reflected in literature more broadly. Robert Nathan's
novel Jonah was published in England and the United States in 1925.
Harald Tandrup's novel Profeten Jonas Privat was translated from the
Danish as Reluctant Prophet in 1939.2 Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd
Vine was first published in 1934. Though not a novelized account of the
Biblical Jonah, Jonah's Gourd Vine concerns a preacher who attempts to

flee from the task he believes God wants him to perform.3 Among poetic

 

1 Letter of September 20, 1976, from Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell to
the present writer.

2 Harald Tandrup, Profeten Jonas Privat (Copenhagen: Berlingske
Forlag, 1937); A. G. Chater, trans., Reluctant Prophet (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1939).

3 Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott, 1934, 1962), pp. 123, 141. See Larry Neal's explanation of
the novel's title in his Introduction, p. xviii. An earlier and more
celebrated use of the book of Jonah in the American novel is Herman
Melville's in his Moby Dick, in which Father Mapple preaches a "Jonah"
sermon and the white whale is generally agreed to have an affinity with
the Biblical prophet's great fish. See Nathalia Wright, "Mob Dick:
Jonah's or Job's Whale?," American Literature 37:2 (May, 1965 , pp. 190-
195. Wright cites the book of Jonah frequently in her Melville's use of
the Bible (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina, 1949). Frederic J.
Masback argues that Joseph Conrad ". . . came close to rewriting the
Book of Jonah to suit his own purposes in both The Shadow Line and The
Nigger of’the Narcissus." Masback, "Conrad's Jonahs," College English
22:5 (February, 1961), p, 328. Mbby Dick itself has been dramatized a
number of times in recent years. Orson Welles' Moby Dicky-Rehearsed: A
Drama in Two Acts (New York, Hollywood, London, Toronto: Samuel French,
1965) was staged by Douglas Campbell at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in

188

189

treatments of Jonah are Aldous Huxley's "Jonah" published in 1920,
Randall Jarrell's "Jonah" in 1951, Thomas John Carlisle's cycle You!
Jonah! in 1968, and Don Mulder's "Jonah" in 1978.4 In the space of two
years two books appeared in which a poet and an illustrator collaborated
to retell the Jonah legend for children.5 Among recent translations into
English have been the "Jonah" poems of Jean-Paul de Dadelsen and Enrique
Lihn.6

Indeed, the climate for Jonah in the present century seems much like
that in the Tudor period. In addition to plays fOr both live actors and

puppets, various literary treatments, and the use of the prophet as

 

New York City. Emmanuel Peluso's Moby Tick, a kind of reminiscence in
the form of a television quiz show, was directed by Peter Goldfarb for
NBC-TV on April 12, 1970. Peluso, Moby Tick: An Original Teleplay, in
New American Plays, vol. 4, ed. William M. Hoffman (New York: Hill and
Wang, Mermaid Dramabook, 1971), pp. 213-241. See also Brainerd Duffield,
Moby Dick: A One—Act Play (Elgin, IL: Performance Publishing, 1972).

4 Aldous Huxley, "Jonah," in Leda (London: Chatto and Windus,
1920), p. 25. Randall Jarrell, "Jonah," in Modern Religious Poems, ed.
Jacob Trapp (New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, 1964),
pp. 83-84; reprinted from Jarrell's The Seven League Crutches published
in 1951. Thomas John Carlisle, You! Jonah! (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans, 1968). Don Mulder, "Jonah,” For the Time Being 5:6 (spe-
cial issue: Don Mulder, The Trail to the Promised Land, 1968), pp. 8-9.

5 George MacBeth, Jonah and the Lord, with illustrations by Margaret
Gordon (London: Macmillan, 1969); Clyde R. Bulla, Jonah and the Great
Fish3 with illustrations by Helga Aichinger (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell,
1970 .

5 Enrique Lihn, "Jonah," in The Bible as/in Literature, ed. James S.
Ackerman and Thayer S. Warshaw (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1976),
pp. 219-220. Dadelsen's Jonah is cited in chapter three, p. 66, n. 8.
Uwe Steffen surveys twentieth-century literary treatments of Jonah in
Das Mysteriwn von Tod und Auferstehung: Formen mid Wandlungen des Jona—Motivs
(thtingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1963). Further examples of the
Jonah tradition in literature will be found in Maurice Beebe, ed.,
Literary Symbolism: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Literature
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1960), pp. 73-90.

 

 

190

homiletic illustration in sermon and tract,7 more casual literary and
cultural references to Jonah occur with some frequency. In Bertolt
Brecht's adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Eduard.rr, first produced
and published in Germany in 1924, Anne cites the prophet:

Jonah sat and waited for Nineveh's promised end.

Only God didn't come back that way that time.

So Nineveh didn't end.8
Jerome Mazzaro calls attention to Robert Lowell's changing the name
Hezekiah Mudge to Jonah Mudge in his stage adaptation of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux."

Intended here may be an oblique allusion to the Biblical Jonah, who

rather than admonish Nineveh tries to run away from his appointed
task. Sodom-Boston has had no such prophet.9

 

7 An example of the latter is James D. Devine's Find God's Will For
You (Glendale, CA: G/L Publications, Regal Books, 1977), in which the
story of Jonah is recounted along with ”. . . parallels to your own
life." Jacques Ellul in similar fashion suggests applications for the
Christian reader in his The Judgment oj’Jonah, trans. Geoffrey W.
Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1971). Terence E.
Fretheim's chapter "Jonah For Today: Two Homilies" concludes his The
Message of Jonah: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1977). George A. F. Knight appends to his commentary on Jonah an essay
on the book's relevance to contemporary life. Knight, Ruth and Jonah:
Introduction and Commentary, John Marsh, Alan Richardson, and R. Gregor
Smith, gen. eds., Torch Bible Commentaries, (London: SCM, pub. 1950),
Appendix i, pp. 81-85. Cartoon-strip versions of the Jonah story have
appeared in Jonah and the Big Fish (Irvine, CA: Harvest House, Compass
Pocket Comics, n.d.) and Friedel Steinmann and Dieter Kohl, Jonah,
trans. Cornelius Lambregtse (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans,
1978). As typifying the interest in Jonah in terms of liturgy and
preaching, Marlin A. VanderWilt delivered a sermon entitled "The Joy of
Repentance" preceded in the service by a call to worship, prayer of
confession, assurance of pardon, and scripture reading all taken from or
based on the book of Jonah. Order for Worship for January 28, 1979, of
the Hope Reformed Church, Holland, Michigan.

3 Bertolt Brecht, Edward II: A Chronicle Play, English Version by
Eric Bentley (New York: Grove, Evergreen Black Cat Book, 1966), p. 66.
The speech occurs in the scene entitled "Queen Anne laughs at the
world's emptiness."

9 Jerome Mazzaro, "Robert Lowell's The Old Glory: Cycle and Epi-
cycle," Western Humanities Review 24 (Autumn, 1970), pp. 354-355.

191
In a 1940 essay entitled "Inside the Whale" George Orwell discusses
novelist Henry Miller's reference to Jonah's entombment, arguing that the
metaphor aptly characterizes the passive acceptance of social evil on the
part of Miller and his generation.10 Thomas Merton refers to Jonah in
the whale in the final line of his poem "Senescente Mundo."11 In his
journal The Sign of’Jonas Merton employs major episodes of the book of
Jonah, as well as the New Testament allusion to the prophet, to charac-
terize his spiritual journey as a Trappist monk.12 In Richard Gordon's
humorous novel The captain's Table the crew of an ocean liner needing
someone to blame for the foul weather attending their embarkation singles
out the new captain as ". . . the Jonah who had attracted the spiteful
Heavens . . ."13 "Project Jonah" is the name of one of the present-day
organizations concerned with preserving whales and other species of sea
mammals. And it is perhaps inevitable that Jonah should have been
considered at some point in the current speculation about the "lost
continent" of Atlantis and the question of earth visitors from outer

space. "Was it, we might ask, a whale or an underwater craft of the

 

10 George Orwell, "Inside the Whale," in A Collection of Essays
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1954), pp. 215-256. See
especially pp. 248—250.

11 Thomas Merton, "Senescente Mundo," in Selected Poems of Thomas
Merton (New York: New Directions, pub. 1959), pp. 85-87.

12 Thomas Merton, The Sign of’Jonas (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
Image Books, 1953).

13 Richard Gordon, The Captain's Table (Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin, 1954), p. 27.

 

 

192
Cosmic Masters that snatched the drowning Jonah from the turbulent sea
and set him back on land and on his way to Nineveh?"14
The reasons for Jonah's currency in the twentieth century can only
be conjectured. Bainbridge-Bell comnents:

Jonah seems to be very popular with playwrights at present. g
suppose they feel he is appropriate to the times we live in.1

It would seem likely that the alternately comic and heroic figure of the
rebel pitted against the circumstances of his existence, fleeing his
responsibility and then accepting it in the face of ridiculous odds and
even then complaining that all has not turned out to his satisfaction,
has been found peculiarly suited to the climate of the present age; That
certain types of "Jonah" dramas have tended to cluster within a decade or
two may perhaps be explained with more certainty. By the mid-twentieth
century a heritage of scriptural interpretive diversity, including non-
literalist modes of understanding Biblical writings, may be seen as
encouraging both the comic and the adaptive treatments of Jonah. More-
over, the critical perception emphasizing the book's comic or ironic
qualities as its primary mode is itself fairly recent; and increasingly
secularized uses and interpretations of Biblical material generally may
have helped to create the ambience in which "adaptive" dramatizations are
more readily conceived and accepted. The marked growth of didactic
"Jonah" drama in the late nineteen-sixties and the nineteen-seventies

parallels the increase during this period of an evangelical orientation

 

14 Brad Steiger, Atlantis Rising (New York: Dell, 1973), p. 95. On
the presence of Jonah in modern literature and culture, including song
and comedy routine, see Thayer S. Warshaw and Betty Lou Miller, with
James A. Ackerman, eds. , Bible-Related Curriculum Materials: A Biblio-
graphy (New York: Abingdon, 1976), pp. 102-103. ‘

15 Letter of June 6, 1976, from Kathleen Bainbridge-Bell to the
present writer.

 

193
in Christian religious practice and writing. And the liturgical drama of
Olov Hartman is surely related to the liturgical movement which has
engaged both Protestants and Roman Catholics since mid-century.

The rapid growth recently of "Jonah" drama makes it a timely topic
for study. Furthermore, these plays illustrate various possible dra-
matic treatments of Biblical literature more generally. For the most-
part, little purpose can be perceived in the "straight" or story-telling
Biblical dramatizations. In neither Githens' A Tish Story nor the
Autrys' puppet play Jonah is fresh insight offered. The story seems at
least as well told in its original prose form. Characterization is
wooden and the development of the action awkward, suggesting that the
“drama" which may be inherent in the source is not simply or easily
realized on the stage. Independent vision and craft on the part of the
dramatist are required. The tendencies toward interpretation of the
Biblical source in the otherwise story-telling treatments by Manley,
Bayer, and Matney do not seem to justify the dramatizations, if for no
other reason than that the interpretive suggestions are not fully clari-
fied or followed to conclusion.

The significant exception in this story-telling category is The
Journey with Jonah in which Madeleine L'Engle renders the tale parti-
cularly entertaining for children. While the events of the Biblical
narrative are not changed, her animal characters introduce a fresh
dimension and irony and humor provide a special perspective not neces-
sarily discerned in the Old Testament account.

Because drama is such an unusual vehicle for critical interpretation
of a Biblical text, the "interpretive" treatment cannot be considered a
major category. While one nay be interested in the playwright's personal

reading of the source, the play itself nay not provide equal interest as

194
drama. Housman's The Burden of’Nineveh reflects the critical tastes of
both the dramatist and his age, and in the determination to discount the
"miracles” the story loses much of its inherent theatricality. Tunstall's
Jonah is difficult to take seriously, with its proliferation of commentators-
as-characters, its citing of scholarly opinions for the sake of carica-
ture, and its constant shift of focus.

By and large the "moral-lesson" drama is concerned with proposi-
tional statement rather than dramatic action or character. The play-
wrights' focus is essentially upon the audience (or readers) and their
appropriation of the moral or ethical argument. Whether the desired
lesson is best served in this fashion is moot; and, in any case, the
devices employed by these dramatists to provide thought do not enhance
the drama per se. In Hodgetts' Jo Jonah one finds no unfolding reve-
lation or series of discoveries in terms of character, dramatic action,
or theme. Rather one is simply carried forward to the narrowly focused
point concerning world mission. Bennett's So Why Does that Weirdo
Prophet Keep watching the water? is less obviously instructive, in that
he does not offer a series of arguments leading ineluctably to the
lesson. But each of Bennett's short scenes sets forth a particular
proposition, all of which are discovered at the conclusion to make the
point about the nature of salvation. A reading of this play along with
the other two Biblical dramas in Bennett's Old Testament collection
reveals that the dramatist has social and political concerns similar to
those of Rutenborn and a like desire to draw parallels between Jonah and

the twentieth century.16 But whereas Rutenborn in The Sign of Jonah

 

16 Bennett, From Nineveh to Now. Included with the "Jonah" play
are Meet Noah Smith and On the Plain of Dura, the latter based on Daniel
3.

 

195

 

perceives dialectical relationships, Bennett draws analogies. Whereas
Rutenborn's audience is invited to participate in the movement from
thesis to antithesis, Bennett's audience is asked to accept the con-
demnation of one value through the persuasiveness of the arguments on
behalf of its opposite.

Poovey in his J0nah—-The World's Greatest Miracle, after striving to
maintain a suspense in not revealing what the greatest "miracle" actually
is, finally sets forth the proposition that God loves everyone. Debrecini
similarly, in his Jonah of'Joppa, teaches God's forgiveness. Fairmanis
In the Belly of’the Fish stresses the sureness of salvation. Perhaps the
most viable theatrical didacticism is that with purely local reference,
as represented by Rose's The Fish Who Went Manning. Though this play
like others of its type is structured to lead the minds of audience

members to acceptance of the lesson, Rose concentrates on the mission

 

responsibility of the particular congregation fOr which the drama has
been written. The humor, of an "inside joke" nature, seems thereby less
strained than is true of other plays in the didactic class.

Despite their didactic character, two of the "moral lesson" plays
are theatrically more viable than the others in this category. Lodge and
Greene both drew upon a strong morality play tradition and responded to
the tastes of their age. The didacticism of A Looking-Glass for London
and England seems as much a matter of popular convention as of the moral
persuasion of the authors. The play is skillfully constructed so that
its sensational incidents achieve maximum theatrical effect. Although in
Campton's Jonah the crisis is basically intellectual and the resolution
is stated as a moral proposition, the thought is engaging in its com-

plexity and the problem does arise from Jonah's character.

196

The recognition that comedy is no less appropriate or effective in
Biblical drama than in any other kind of drama is refreshing. A number
of the recent "Jonah" comedies, furthermore, no more than realize for the
stage what contemporary scholarship understands to be the tone and pur-
pose of the Biblical book. Beer exploits the comic incident character-
izing the book of Jonah. His Jonah and the Whale is a well-crafted,
farcical entertainment. Mankowitz's equally skillful It Should Happen to
a Dog stands between pure farce and comedy of idea. If the picture of
Jonah-as-shlemiel is to furnish the audience an opportunity to reflect on
the human dilemma, the hints are given but the audience itself must make
the appropriate application. In his several "Jonah" dramatizations
Bridie employs the satire and irony in the source itself to illumine
contemporary religious and cultural mores in satiric and ironic fashion.
Introducing as well his own particular views-~or mfischievous suggestions--
on such matters as the female versus the male character, Bridie provides
a drama rich in humorous commentary relevant to contemporary experience
as well as to his Biblical source.

The use of any literary or historical source as a vehicle for
exploring essentially contemporary issues is a tradition of some standing
in the theater. The "adaptive" dramatizations surveyed in the present
study suggest that such an approach may be particularly effective. There
is little reason that Biblical material should be less suited to such
treatment than classical mythology or historical events. Themes in this
type of treatment are as varied as the individual concerns and perceptions
of the dramatists. Rutenborn's The Sign of'Jonah, furthermore, demon-
strates the possibilities for exploration of theatrical form as well as

dramatic theme. His dialectical approach to subject matter, actor and

 

197

 

character relationships, the respective roles of audience and performers,
and the significance of history makes the Biblical material accessible
and relevant in a fresh and striking manner.

Hartman's Prophet and Carpenter, finally, documents a way in which
Biblical literature may be employed in the service of a liturgical drama.
Merely to set a dramatic work in a chancel or to make use of a chorus or
of verse dialogue does not necessarily create what is distinctively
liturgical. Hartman's play, which could not be performed as effectively
for an audience unversed in the Lutheran tradition of worship and which
indeed could hardly be performed outside the architectural space for
which it was written, illustrates that the shape of the particular

liturgy determines the form of the liturgical drama.

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