sacrifice of Issac in medieval English drama, The

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 1999 by Davidson, Clifford

Anguish and dread are certainly present elsewhere. In the Cornish Ordinalia, Abraham is heartsick as he asks Isaac to lie down on the wood on the altar, and the latter requests that his arms and legs be tied down so that he will not flee when the flames reach him, for his "pains will be cruel/ Before being burnt to ashes" (1349-55).

In the text of the York play, which presents, as noted above, an Isaac who is slightly more than thirty years old, Abraham is literally "wighte and wilde of thoght" (222) when he contemplates what he must do. He will do God's command even though he would rather himself die than see his son sacrificed. Isaac in his dread asks that his father should place "*is kyrcheffe on myn eghne" (288). The Towneley Abraham, having prepared Isaac and placed a cloth over his eyes so that he will not see the blade when he strikes, pauses and weeps profusely as he thinks about what he is to tell Sarah. The weeping must continue for some time while God speaks to an angel, who is sent to stop the killing at the very moment when Abraham has mustered the courage to slay Isaac. Thej oy with which Abraham speaks to his son, whom he also kisses, is mixed with terror at what might have happened: "Son, thou has skapid a full hard grace; / Thou shuld haue beyn both brent and brokyn" (27980). "For ferd, syr, was I nerehand mad," Isaac explains (286).29 In the N-Town play, Abraham is at first apprehensive when the Angel relays to him God's command that "Thy wel-belouyd childe ku must now kylle" (81); he accepts the command as necessarily to be followed, but reveals that "3itt be fadyr to scle be sone, / Grett care it causyth in my thought" (91-92). He weeps, and tells Isaac that he has been ordered to "kylle" him, that the fire prepared for the sacrifice must be for him, and that "pi careful fadyr must be ki fo" (138-44). The deed will be unnatural and a most terrible thing; he will cover his son's face with a "kerchere" so that when he slays him he will not be able to see his "lovely vesage" (179-81) . As he prepares to spill his son's blood, the angel calls out to him. The tone of these plays would have been quite different if Abraham had in fact been represented as utterly confident that God would send a substitute sacrifice. The conclusion in which the sacrificial animal is miraculously supplied must seem to come to him as a surprise. The plays are hence in spirit not inconsistent with the earliest iconography of the sacrifice of Isaac which developed the theme of deliverance (van Woerden 238, 242).