Adriaan Jacob Barnouw

“ Dutch love of realism, in scorning to barter the tangible tail under foot for the invisible wings over head, is truer to the experience of life, for weak humanity has always been more easily susceptible [iv] to the suggestive power of evil than of good.
Mary of Nimmegen finds it so. Her “God or the Devil, ’tis all one to me”, is a vain pretence at impartial allegiance. Who stands at the parting of the ways to Heaven and Hell, waiting for God to call or for the Devil to snatch her, has already passed beyond the point of retrievement. ”

“ And we, of the twentieth century, can agree with him, though we do not share the poet’s Mariolatry. For Heaven’s joy over a repentant sinner must ever find its echo in the poetry of this world which is a gift of Heaven to its chosen. And of those chosen was our nameless author. The play of “Maskeroon” has long ceased to impress repentant Maries, but “Mary of Nimmegen” herself has attained immortality, thanks to her maker’s gift, which was of the Holy Ghost’s bestowing. ”

“ Faction has damned full many a wight. [30]
THE DEVIL
To Hell’s convocation, in unending dole,
I summon this soul to its final fruition.
The folly of men who in factions enroll
And for some princeling get damned to perdition!
They are ours! all ours, who in this condition
Persist stubborn-hearted despite of all ill.
Envious faction gives yearly addition
To Hell of its millions, lament it who will. ¶ How Emma and Moonen journeyed to Antwerp, where they wrought much evil.
When Emma and Moonen had for some while tarried at Bolduc they journeyed to Antwerp whither they be speedily come. ”

“ To have been the first to discover its fitness for the stage is a title of distinction for our playwright, and we regret our ignorance that can not link his name, as it deserves, with those greater names of Marlowe, Goethe and Wagner. His drama also affords an early instance of the effective introduction of the play within the play. It served a double purpose in this case. For not only did the show of “Maskeroon” cause Mary to repent her sinful life, but it was, at the same time, an “oratio pro domo” of the poet, as it fitly impressed the audience with the ethical value of his art. ”

“ Wanhope is the devil’s snare. That homely truth, a reflection of the mediaeval doctrine that wanhope was one of the sins against the Holy Ghost, is illustrated by Mary’s reckless invocation of “either God or all the fiends of Hell”, and Moonen appears on the scene at once in accordance with the Dutch adage which says that when you speak of the devil you tread on his tail. English sense of decorum, which shuns the mention of the unspeakable one, pretends to hear the flutter of wings when it speaks of an angel of heaven. ”

“ Is pure penitence held more dear
Than ought that we may read or hear.
Thus hath Emma received her penance from the Pope. And her eme straightway let make the rings so fast about her neck and arms that in her lifedays they might not be done off but by the will and the miracle of our dear Lord.
¶ How Emma journeyed from Rome and how she became a nun at the cloister of Converted Sinners at Maestricht. ”

“ The way of least resistance is the way to Hell.
Mary is never in doubt as to the real nature of her one-eyed companion. “Ye be the devil out of hell!”, is her reply to Moonen’s introduction of himself, and in her first lament over the sinful life she is leading she admits to her own soul that
“Though he saith little, I may not him mistake:
He is a fiend or but little more.”
[v]
The innocent maiden who lived a blameless life in her uncle’s home has, by one night’s experience, become a hardened sinner. It is difficult for a modern reader to believe in Mary’s sudden wickedness. ”

“ The audience get an intimation that something awful is impending, but they are kept in suspense as to [xiv] what it will be and who will be the victim, whether Mary or her uncle. In that we observe the subtle touch of the artist who wrote the dialogue. He can not have been the same man who inserted the superfluous and meddlesome prose.
How, then, must we account for its intrusion if the prose did not originally form part of the play? The manner in which the drama has been preserved accounts for it. “Mary of Nimmegen” has not come down to us in manuscript form. ”

“ The action on the stage is an epitome of that mental process, condensing temptation and surrender into one simple scene, the intervening phases of mental struggle and agony being left to the imagination of the audience. The language, which is more conservative than the stage, has retained that simple allegory which modern drama has discarded: we still speak of “a fallen girl”, although we demand from the modern playwright that he show us how she slid into sin.
While the inner life is thus translated into the [vi] simplest of allegories, life’s visible pageant is mirrored in all its variety. ”

“ Now shall we stint a little of Emma and Moonen and tell of Sir Gysbrecht, her eme.
After that Mary, the which now hight Emma, had been for some while away, Sir Gysbrecht, her eme, much wondered at her tarrying, and said with himself thus:
O anxiety, which clamors within me strong,
How dost thou rend my heart and my wit molest.
For that my niece Mary doth bide so long
Who to Nimmegen market hath her dress’d,
Where if it grew dark, I told her, as for the best,
Or haply in any wise she were frighted,
She should at my sister’s seek her rest;
There ever I lodge when I am benighted. ”

“ The Antwerp that Dürer knew can not have been much different from that where Moonen and Mary lived for seven years. For hardly more than a generation had passed, in 1520, since the author conceived his play. The wicked aunt’s fealty to Duke Adolf of Guelders is a motif extraneous to the plot, as poetic justice demands that her suicide be an atonement for her cruelty to young Mary, but it reconciles the historian to its preposterous intrusion by affording him a clue to the date of composition of the drama. ”

“ When Moonen the devil had caught up Emma high above all the houses, he cast her down from above into the street as he was minded to break her neck, whereat the people were sore adrad. And Sir Gysbrecht, her eme, who hearkened also to the play, marveled what it meant and who it might be that fell [60] from so great height, saying and asking of them that stood by thus:
Her luck is good if her neck be not broke in twain. ”

“ The poet’s device of varying the rhyme scheme of the dialogue according to the mood of the speakers has been carefully reproduced by the translator, so that the reader can form his own opinion of its effectiveness.
Apart from its poetical qualities the play of “Mary of Nimmegen” deserves to be read—and enacted, to be sure—because it is a fine specimen of mediaeval drama. Recent productions in Holland have shown [xxiv] that the play does not miss its effect upon a twentieth-century audience. ”

“ For all those fourteen years the Mother of God had served, in her person, as sacristan, because Beatrice had never let a day go by without praying an Ave Maria.
The love idyll of this early legend has been turned into a grotesque caricature by the author of our miracle play. The handsome youth whose seductions proved stronger than the nun’s monastic vows is [ii] changed into “an ill-favored devil of a man”, as he is described by one of the tipplers in the Antwerp tavern. ”

“ The knavery of this world is deep and wide. ¶ How Mary was shamefully bespoken of her aunt.
Thus is Mary departed from her uncle and come unto Nimmegen, where she did buy all that was needful for her or her uncle. And on the selfsame day that she was come to Nimmegen her aunt had fallen out with four or five of her gossips concerning the Duke Adolf who had done into prison the old [5] Duke his father. So that she was the rather mad or a raging she-devil than a Christian wight ”

“ The poet was evidently more familiar with the city of Antwerp, and his picture of the drinking scene in the tavern of the Golden Tree is vivid enough to be a first-hand impression. He [xxi] was a poet of no mean talent, and not unconscious, it seems, of his own excellence in the noble art of rhetoric. The pride of the poets of the Renaissance is forestalled in his praise of poesy, of which he made Mary his mouthpiece:
“Rhetoric is not to be learned by skill. ”

“ If from above I may have leave.
Men shall me for a god receive;
And Hellwards they shall pack in troops.
After Emma and Moonen had lived wellnigh six year in Antwerp at the sign of the “Golden Tree”, where marvelous much wickedness was done of them, it fell out that Emma was minded once more to see her eme and likewise her friends in the land of Guelders, and she prayed Moonen that he should thereto consent and fellow her on the journey thither, whereon he spake thus:
[44]
Emma, to your prayer I would not say no. ”

“ Women in the Netherlands were evidently emancipated before their sisters elsewhere. The Italian Quirini, Venetian envoy to the Court at Brussels, in the early sixteenth century, was amazed at the freedom the women of Antwerp enjoyed. “The ladies”, he wrote in 1506, “wear bright costumes and spend all their leisure, when the work is done, in dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments, giving themselves entirely over to pleasure. They keep house, in addition, and manage all domestic affairs, without their husbands’ control.” ”

“ The play does not tell us how many years her penance lasted, but supposing that it was short and that the author wrote soon after Mary’s death, the date of composition can hardly have been much earlier than 1480. It matters little whether the poet dramatized historical events or an invented story. The records of the town of Nimmegen contain no reference to a performance of the wain-pageant of Maskeroon, nor has a trace been found of Mary’s grave, with the three rings suspended over it, in the convent for converted sinners at Maastricht. ”

“ That he is evil, who crossing doth disdain.
How shall I repent? Alas, ’tis plain
That I be stept whither is no retreating.
Hola, yonder I have spied twain
To whom I yesterday did grant a merry meeting.
I must go forth and give them pleasant greeting.
After this she sat her down to drink with her potmates, [42] among the which Moonen so wrought that again one of them met his death. And he who did it was led of Moonen beyond the city walls where at the devil’s prompting he slew yet another, in the hope, as Moonen had told, that he should thus possess him of great store of money ”

“ In the days that Duke Arent of Guelders was done in prison at Grave by his son Duke Adolf and his knavish fellows there dwelt three mile from Nimmegen a devout priest hight Sir Gysbrecht, and with him dwelt a fair young maid hight Mary, his sister’s daughter, whose mother was dead. And this aforesaid maid kept her uncle’s house serving him in all needful with honesty and diligence.
¶ How Sir Gysbrecht hath sent his niece Mary to Nimmegen.
It chanced that this Sir Gysbrecht would send his niece Mary to Nimmegen there to buy what so they needed, saying to her thus:
[2]
Mary! ”

“ And because of its value as the only testimony we possess of an eye-witness of the drama’s production on the mediaeval stage, the prose has been retained by the present translator, his book being a faithful reproduction in English of the earliest version of the play as printed by Willem Vorsterman. ”

“ Dürer could not do otherwise than bring his women companions to the feast. But at his inn in the Woolstreet where he could live in German fashion, he let his wife and maid have their meals in the kitchen, and took his own in the parlor with mine host. ”