Reviewed
by Kevin J. Harty harty@lasalle.edu
To paraphrase a question once posed by Virginia Woolf, what
if Geoffrey Chaucer had had a sister?
Would she have been like Margery Kempe?
While their lives partially overlapped, Chaucer was dead by the time
Margery undertook the more extraordinary parts of her life. Her father, John Burnham, was mayor of
Bishop’s Lynn and a Member of Parliament, and conceivably could have crossed
paths with Chaucer. Her husband too was
the town mayor, and Margery appears to have been destined to lead an
unremarkable but comfortable bourgeois life.
But she gave birth to fourteen children, proved a failure as a brewer, negotiated
a celibate separation from her husband, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and
to Rome, and she was also “in Galice at Seint-Jame, and at Coloigne” like the
Wife of Bath, a Chaucerian character with whom she shared a number of traits,
including an early fondness for ostentatious styles of dress. At first, Margery travelled on her own
relying upon the kindness of strangers, but she seems to have undertaken her
later travels in the company of her son, who may have been the first to
transcribe parts of what we today call The
Book of Margery Kempe.
Illiterate, Margery nonetheless knew of the writings of St.
Bridget of Sweden, who was canonized during Margery’s lifetime—Wulp’s play has
her actually in Rome during Bridget’s 1391 canonization ceremony—and consulted
with Julian of Norwich, several years before the latter died: Julian assured
Margery of the truth of her visions. At
one point, Margery returned home to nurse her husband through his last
illness. Her constant public weeping—out
of spiritual joy—her unorthodox lifestyle—she often wore white in public
against the prohibitions of the Church—and her tendency to preach in public brought
her to the attention of the local clergy any number of times. She was accused of heresy—specifically of
being a Lollard—but she was in each case exonerated of all charges.
While Margery and Julian have today belatedly earned a place
in the literary and religious canons as mystics, John Wulp wrote his play and
had it first produced in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1958. In the following year, a much revised version
of the play opened off Broadway in New York with Frances Sternhagen as Margery,
Gene Hackman as her long-suffering husband, and Charles Nelson Reilly in the
supporting cast. Hope Emily Allen only
discovered the sole surviving manuscript of Margery’s book in 1934, and her
edition for the Early English Text Society did not appear until 1940. John Wulp is, therefore, a true pioneer in
Kempe studies. The current New York revival, directed by Austin Pendleton, uses
the original 1958 script. As Wulp notes
in the program for this production, the play “tells the story of a woman who
did not want her life to be defined either by men or by the strictures of her
society. The gap between her ambitions
and her ability embodies the entire human condition.”
The production uses no scenery and limited props as it traces
Margery’s early determination to be something more than simply a wife and a
mother, the male-prescribed virtuous options available to her. She decides that she will abandon husband and
children—the script gives her but six children—and become a brewer, but her
talents are less than suited to brewing, and her one chance at success in the trade
stems from the distinction that she represents in being a female brewer. Men will flock to her to ogle at her as a novelty. Rather than determining her own destiny, she
will simply become a victim of the medieval male gaze. Margery then decides that she will join
forces with the devil, and lead a life of sin.
But the devil she encounters only offers her yet another male-prescribed
role, whore. Never one to accept
adversity or a setback, Margery sets out instead to become a saint, but the
male-dominated church demands a miracle as proof of her sanctity. Happily, one occurs soon enough in a somewhat
unorthodox (very Margery) way when the roof of a chapel collapses on her, and
she escapes with only a few scraps and scratches. Convinced of her own saintliness, and
reluctantly blessed by the ecclesiastical authorities, Margery joins a ragtag
group of pilgrims as they set out for the Holy Land and then return by way of
Rome. Margery is not an easy travelling
companion, but she manages to scrape by, and eventually returns to her husband
and children to secure a roof over her head as she begins to dictate the book
that would eventually bear her name.
That book’s significance lies in its being the first
autobiography composed in English by a woman.
But Margery would, thanks in part to the Reformation, disappear from
both the literary and the theological landscape for centuries. And while Margery now has a more secure place
in the canon, she still suffers from a male-prescribed ecclesiastical prejudice. Julian of Norwich, the anchorite who
abandoned the world and embraced contemplative celibacy, is today venerated as
an official saint by both the Anglican and the Evangelical Lutheran communions,
and as a popular saint by Roman Catholics.
Worldly Margery, the not quite totally rehabilitated fallen woman, has
achieved no such recognition. Holy
recognition and sexism still seem to go hand in hand. A male saint like
Augustine could allegedly pray “Lord, make me pure, but not quite yet.” Women still seem to have fewer options, and less
readily receive forgiveness and absolution.
Andrus Nichols as Margery
Kempe
Andrus Nichols makes a wonderful Margery—lively,
self-assured, yet difficult to put up with—the real Margery’s bouts of
prolonged public weeping were met with decidedly mixed reactions by those who
endured them. The other members of the
cast double and triple up on roles, and do so admirably. Pendleton’s direction is steady. John Wulp has had a distinguished career as a
producer, scenic designer, director and artist since writing his Margery play,
which won him a Rockefeller Grant. He
subsequently would earn an Obie Award, a Tony, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer
Circle Critics Award, among other recognitions for his later work in the
theater. This revival of The Saintliness of Margery Kempe is part
of a wave of theatrical medievalism in New York. This past Spring saw a Broadway production of
Shaw’s Saint Joan, and the Fall will
bring a production of Jane Anderson’s Mother
of the Maid, with Glenn Close as Joan’s Mother, further downtown at the
Public Theater. That play has been
advertised as the “tale of Joan of Arc, as seen through the eyes of her mum who
is doing her very best to accept the fact that her daughter is different.”
The Saintliness of Margery Kempe by John Wulp at The Duke
Theater on 42nd Street in New York, produced by the Perry Street
Theatre Company and Jonathan Demar in association with Frederick M. Zollo and
Diane Procter. Directed by Austin Pendleton.
Featuring Vance Barton, Latonya Borsay, Timothy Doyle, Michael Genet,
Ginger Grace, Andrus Nichols, Jason O’Connell, Pippa Peartree, and Thomas
Sommo. July 5-August 26, 2018.
Kevin J. Harty, La
Salle University
