Hrotswit of Gandersheim: The Playwriting Today Interview Editorís Note: Hrotswit, as you probably know, lived in the 10th century A.D. However, as any true journalist can testify, nothing gets in the way of a good story; our intrepid reporter Jane Truenough tracked Hrotswit down, and the results are given below for your edification and enjoyment.
JT: First things first. What is your real name? Thereís an old wood engraving with the name "Helena von Rossow," which some believe refers to you ("Hroswitha" 1). Does it?
HG: I renounced my worldly identity when I entered the Abbey of Gandersheim; Hrotswit is the only name I shall ever be known by.
JT: Weíre not going to get very far if you refuse to answer my questions.
HG: I will answer any and all questions that will enable me to glorify my God and Savior.
JT: Yes. Of course. All right then, tell me, please--why did you enter the abbey? You were a canoness as opposed to a Benedictine Regular, isnít that right?
HG: Yes, I was under the rule of the order, but had not taken all the same vows; chastity and obedience, but not poverty, which allowed for a less restricted life (Butler 55).
JT: Why?
HG: Well...
JT: I wonít tell. Just between us girls.
HG: You are not a priest.
JT: No, of course not, but I can keep a promise.
HG: Very well. I was eager to develop my intellect, and the only place to do so was the abbey.
JT: You were of the nobility; we know that, because only daughters of lords and barons and such went to the Gandersheim Abbey (Gilder 80; Butler 58). Wouldnít you have been free to marry some nobleman and enjoy intellectual pursuits at home?
HG: Even castles did not have hundreds of manuscripts the way abbeys and monasteries did, nor did they have teachers. And besides, if I had married I would have had to do my husbandís bidding, and a husband who wants his wife to be learned is no guarantee. No, the abbey was the only place for me to develop the gifts God had given me, and it would have been wrong for me to deny that He had done so (Gilder 83).
JT: Tell me more about the abbey. What was it like?
HG: Oh, it was a wonderful place! As Iím certain you know, the abbey was founded in the Year of Our Lord 850 by Ludolph, the Duke of Saxony (Gilder 80).
JT: Yes; and later, in 962, Otto the Great, the first Holy Roman Emperor, received the imperial crown from the Pope himself at Rome (Butler 23).
HG: Indeed. My abbesses were members of the imperial family; their fief was from the King himself, just as a feudal baronís would be, and one of their responsibilities was to entertain any members of the royal family who were passing through. So we enjoyed regular contact with the Imperial Court, as well as with Rome, which kept us in touch with the latest advances in learning (Gilder 80).
JT: Not to mention the latest news; your poem on the Passion of St. Pelagius of Cordova says that you heard the account of his martyrdom from an eyewitness, so there must have been communication between Cordova and Saxony, which would certainly have influenced artistic and intellectual discourse (Kemp-Welch 13).
HG: Oh, yes. And then Otto II married a Greek princess named Theophano, and she brought with her all sorts of scholarly and artistic people (Kemp-Welch 7), and told me about things in the East (Gilder 85). And of course there was the monastery of Corvey nearby; we were able to study their wonderful artwork and library as well (Butler 9).
JT: You had access to the plays of Terence, according to your own writings, since you take him as your artistic, if not moral, model (Butler 9).
HG: Yes, the "poetic creations" of Terence are written in such beautiful language that it is easy to be seduced and carried away by them, "delighting in his flow of language," and forget that their "godless contents" are not fit for contemplation and will pollute the mind (Butler 75; Kemp-Welch 17; "Hroswitha" 1).
JT: Interesting choice of words; your own plays often deal with seduction, or attempted seduction, or even attempted rape. How could you, a woman in a convent, have written so graphically about such topics?
HG: Such are the perils confronting Christian virgins, given the wicked sinfulness of unrepentant human nature. I wanted to treat such subjects in an edifying way, while
"avoid[ing] through omission the pernicious voluptuousness of pagan writers" (Gilder 84), and instead showing the "laudable chastity of sacred virgins" (Wilson xi). "I...often hesitated with a blush on my cheeks...because the nature of the work obliged me to...apply my mind to the wicked passion of illicit love...[b]ut if I had hesitated on account of my blushes I could not have carried out my purpose, or have set forth the praise of innocence to the fullness of my ability" (Butler 75).
JT: Scholars after your time have speculated quite a bit about how you could be so conversant with the ways of the world. How old were you when you entered the abbey?
HG: I was twenty-three.
JT: Old enough to have seen for yourself the way the world could be. Were you anxious to get away from it?
HG: I was not sorry to be inside the convent, in an atmosphere more conducive to spiritual as well as intellectual growth.
JT: But did you ever miss it?
HG: Being a canoness, I was allowed to see our royal visitors, and the rest of the time I had my studies to interest me, so there was little to miss.
JT: You mean you had the best of both worlds, the advantages of the convent without suffering all of its restrictions.
HG: I would not call it suffering. I was very happy there.
JT: So it seems. Did you start to write with the encouragement of your abbess?
HG: Oh, no. I told no one at first, but only wrote in secret. Much of my early writing I destroyed because I did not think it good enough. I was afraid that if I showed my work to those more skilled than I, their criticism would be enough to discourage me from ever writing again (Gilder 81).
JT: Your first works were a collection of poems, one of which is especially notable for us moderns. You are the first person to have done a poetic treatment of the tale of
Theophilus, who sells his soul to the devil. Theophilus became known as Faust; and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe, and later a German writer named Goethe, both adapted your story into plays, which are among the great works of world literature (Gilder 82).
HG: Really? To think that I should have been an inspiration to someone else...
JT: Thatís not all. You may have influenced the man considered the greatest playwright of all time, William Shakespeare.
HG: How could that be, that my little talent could affect someone so great?
JT: Your plays were discovered in 1492 and published in 1501; by the 1580ís, when Shakespeare was beginning to write plays in London, they would have been widely available, and Shakespeare was an avid reader of anything he could get his hands on. We
think he read your plays because the scene in Calimachus, when the title character goes to the tomb of the woman he loves, is very similar to a scene in one of Shakespeareís plays called Romeo and Juliet (Gilder 78, 94).
HG: Is it a Christian play?
JT: Not exactly--
HG: Then I am sorry. I would not want to be the source, even indirectly, of pagan entertainment.
JT: But itís not exactly pagan, either. Juliet has not taken any vows of chastity, and Romeo and Juliet are married by a priest; their love is not illicit.
HG: Oh, good. I am glad to hear it.
JT: You and your plays are notable in other ways as well. Many people today consider you one of the first feminist writers. Besides the fact that you are the only recorded playwright from the Roman era to the twelfth century (Gilder 77)--
HG: The only one?
JT: Yes. If there were any other plays written, they have not survived.
HG: Oh, my.
JT: Besides that, you are the first known woman playwright of recorded history, and your plays show women triumphing over the would-be oppression of men.
HG: By the grace of God.
JT: Yes, but they show it nonetheless.
HG: Of course. "[Although] the blandishments of lovers are enticing, so much greater is the
glory of our helper in heaven, so much more glorious the triumph of those who prevail, especially where womanís weakness triumphs and manís shameless strength is made to succumb. . . ." (Butler 75).
JT: Exactly! In Dulcitius, for example, we have the famous scene--
HG: Famous?
JT: Oh, yes--in which Dulcitius wants to take advantage of the three virgins, and winds up in the kitchen with the pots and pans instead (Wilson 41-42). Itís really quite funny.
HG: Thank you. I meant it to show Godís protection of those who are faithful to Him.
JT: But God does not just protect them--Dulcitius becomes the laughingstock of the town (Wilson 43).
(Hrotswit covers a smile with her hand.)
HG: Yes, he does, doesnít he?
JT: (Laughing) In fact, you could say he was the first panhandler.
HG: I beg your pardon?
JT: Never mind. For another example, in Sapientia, the three daughters are quite bold when being questioned by Hadrian. Letís look at a bit of that dialogue:
Faith: For His love we are all ready to die. . . .How can I help laughing?
Such a lack of wisdom is ludicrous. . . .Hadrian: Whose lack of wisdom?
Faith: Why, yours!
Hadrian: You dare to speak to the Emperor so?
Faith: I speak the truth.
Hadrian: This is not to be endured!
....................................................................................................................Hadrian: You shall say "Great is Diana." That is all. I will not compel
you to sacrifice.Charity: I will not say it.
Hadrian: Why?
Charity: Because I will not tell a lie. . . .
Antiochus: Oh, what an insult--to be defied by a mere doll!
Charity: Although I am small, my reason is big enough to put you
to shame.Hadrian: Take her away, Antiochus, and have her stretched on the
rack and whipped. (Butler 92-93, 99-100)
These young women, little girls really, are clearly not at all afraid, of the Emperor or any man. They answer without mincing words, and even with laughter, though they know they will be tortured, and eventually martyred. Modern feminists see them and other characters in your plays as role models for women who are still suffering male oppression. Sue-Ellen Case, for instance, says that you portray chastity as a "declaration of independence from prescribed marriages, attempted rape and all acts of male sexual aggression which ignore womenís consent" (32).
HG: We are all equal before God. If men cannot realize this, and respect women accordingly, then it is all the more important for women to know that God values them.
JT: Like Pafnutius, in which the title character is a monk who has no inner peace until he persuades the prostitute Thais to repent and live for God. Case says Pafnutius shows that the "objectification of women disrupts the entire community" (34).
HG: Yes. As Pafnutius says to his disciples at the beginning of the play, everything in the universe is connected and related to everything else. "Just as tones.../Make up a certain piece of music/If they are harmoniously combined,/So too dissonant elements, in proper combination,/Make up one single world" (Bonfante, 107). One personís sin harms everyone else, and one personís repentance benefits us all.
JT: Interesting. Letís talk about how you approach playwriting. Do you consider it essential for a play to have a central character, for instance, or a central conflict? Eckenstein says that the essential interest of all your plays lies in the "mental and moral conflicts...[that arise during the] transition period from heathendom to Christianity" (qtd. in Butler 76).
HG: Yes, I would agree with that. "My object [is] to glorify virtue in the same medium as is used to glorify vice" (Butler 83), which is shown in such conflicts. I do not try to
focus on any particular character, but simply on the story that needs to be told, and let the characters develop accordingly. Really, if you want to look at it that way, my central
character is always Christ, because it is devotion to Him that brings the Christian and non-Christian characters into conflict with one another, although He does not appear onstage.
JT: Except in Calimachus.
HG: Yes, there is a brief scene where Christ appears to St. John and Andronicus to foretell the resurrection of Drusiana and Calimachus (Bonfante 64-65).
JT: I have one very important question for you. There has been an ongoing debate as to
whether your plays were ever actually performed. Some critics go so far as to say you never even existed--
HG: Never existed!
JT: They find it unbelievable that a woman in a convent, with no examples to go by, would have written plays such as you write, and they claim your plays are forgeries (Gilder 78).
HG: But I did have examples: the works of Terence, and "of other Latin poets, historians, and essayists, and the writings of the Church Fathers" (Butler 74), as well as the stories of Theophano about theatre in the East.
JT: Yes, we know that now, and the authenticity of the manuscripts of your plays has been established (Gilder 78). But still, some critics argue that theatre had been so totally banned by the Church that your plays could not have found an audience.
HG: Well, of course that is incorrect. The licentious temptations of vulgar entertainment of
course had to be restrained, but edifying performances of scriptural and religious themes would not have been censured.
JT: So the plays were performed? Most of your stage directions are written directly into your dialogue, but there are a couple of places in the manuscripts we have where stage directions are listed separately, which would seem to make it pretty clear that they were meant to be performed (Butler 112-113).
HG: Certainly they were performed. The truth is, though I hesitate to say it, lest I seem to be claiming preference for myself--
JT: Go on.
HG: Otto II himself was one of my patrons. He wanted to be the first to read all my new poems (Butler 43), and he and other members of the court were witnesses to all my plays
at various times, when they came to visit. Theophano especially loved them, because she missed being able to attend the theatre regularly, as she had in Greece.
JT: How were the plays performed? The language you use in your dialogues seems to
suggest that masks and costumes were an integral part of your plays; you often refer specifically to the color and style of clothing the characters wear, and there are also allusions to characters being in disguise or having their appearance change during the play (Butler 107-110).
HG: Yes, from reading the ancient texts and from speaking with Theophano, we were aware of the use of masks and costumes, and were able to incorporate them into our performances.
JT: And where were the plays staged? You didnít have an actual stage available to you at the Abbey, right?
HG: No. We made use of "the arched colonnades forming the cloister walk adjacent to the
garden" (Butler 50). Each section of the walkway could be used for a different locale.
JT: Now, what about all the scenes of torture and martyrdom that occur in your plays, as well as other unpleasant things? I must say that the descriptions are very graphic.
HG: Yes, but they reflect the sorts of torments and persecutions Christians often endured for the sake of their faith.
JT: And what torments! Two of the three virgins of Dulcitius are burned to death, and one is shot with an arrow; Drusiana in Calimachus nearly has her corpse raped by a crazed would-be lover; Thais in Pafnutius does three yearsí penance in a cell with no toilet. But
the real winners in the martyrdom contest are the three sisters in Sapientia. Faith is flogged, has her nipples cut off, is thrown onto a hot grill and then into a pot of boiling wax and pitch, and beheaded; Hope is whipped, torn apart by claws, disemboweled, thrown into a pot of boiling oil, and beheaded; and Charity is hung on a rack, lashed, thrown into a raging furnace, and then also beheaded (Wilson 45, 49, 57, 115, 136-146). Whatís up with all the violence?
HG: I wanted to encourage others to persevere in their faith, to show them that many saints have undergone horrible trials and triumphed through Godís grace. Those scenes, of course, we left to the imagination of the audience. The descriptions were enough for them
to picture what was happening.
JT: Iíll say.
HG: We did not have things like--what is it called?
JT: Television.
HG: Yes, television. We had only our own minds.
JT: At least one writer thinks the violence in your works has to do with sexual repression.
HG: Repression?
JT: Yes. Rosamond Gilder says that a fascination with violence and sadism is a sort of "psychic compensation" for your "emotional suppressions" (89).
HG: Hmmph.
JT: What do you think about that?
HG: I do not see the logic of such an argument.
JT: Donít you? Those who take vows of chastity and live unmarried have to suppress their own erotic feelings, not having the usual outlets for sexual expression, and the force of those constantly submerged feelings is so violent that they have to come out somehow. Itís a frequent feature of medieval literature (Gilder 89).
HG: Most of my plays do not feature such violence--only the martyr plays, and the history of the Church shows clearly that such tortures are not unrealistic. The persecution of Christians was often marked by such extremities. Perhaps your Rosamond Gilder is really thinking of her own problems.
JT: Uh, I wouldnít know about that. Well, it seems our time has come to an end, much as Iíve enjoyed our talk.
HG: Thank you. I have enjoyed it as well.
JT: Say hello to Kit Marlowe for me.
HG: Who?
JT: Christopher Marlowe. The playwright I mentioned earlier.
HG: Iím sorry, we are not acquainted. I do not believe I have ever heard his name mentioned.
JT: Hmm. I guess you two donít move in the same spheres. Thanks again for your time.Works Cited
Butler, Sister Mary Marguerite, R.S.M. Hrotsvitha: The Theatricality of Her Plays. New York: Philosophical Library, 1960.
Case, Sue-Ellen. Feminism and Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1988.
Gilder, Rosamond. "Hrotsvitha, A Tenth-Century Nun." From Enter the Actress. 1931. Women In Theatre: Compassion & Hope. Ed. Karen Malpede. New York: Limelight Editions, 1985. 75-96.
"Hroswitha." Catholic Encyclopedia Online. 1 Nov. 2000. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/ 07504b.htm>.
Kemp-Welch, Alice. Of Six Mediaeval Women: To Which is Added a Note on Mediaeval Gardens. Williamstown, Massachusetts: Corner House publishers, 1979.
Von Gandersheim, Hrotswit. The Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Trans. Katharina Wilson. Volume 62 Series B. New York: Garland Publishing, 1989.
Von Gandersheim, Hrotswit. The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim. Trans. Larissa Bonfante and Alexandra Bonfante-Warren. New York: New York University Press, 1979.